Differences
by DewWater
Summary: When Jafar fails to be captured in the genie lamp and Princess Jasmine is discovered to not be the real princess after all, a fight for love, the throne, and genies insues. Who will come out on top?
1. An Inlook

**Disclaimer: I do not own Aladdin.**

**A/N: I am currently participating in the play Aladdin at my school, (I'm Jafar, go figure). It finally came to the point where I had to write a fanfiction: what if, what if, what if. Things that you never expected to happen, like Jafar dropped the lamp when the genie was about to turn him into the most powerful djinn of all time and never becoming locked inside a lamp for all eternity, Aladdin and Jasmine breaking up, a Sultana instead of a Sultan, E.T.C. ALL CHAOS BREAKS LOSE, in other words, but I have attempted to make sense of my crazy ideas. Bear with me, facts will be changed, as I have not seen the movie in over three or four years.**

**Chapter 1**

**An Inlook**

**(Jafar)**

"The lamp!" the very street rat that I had been trying to capture for the last eternity cried. I allowed a devious smile to play across my lips. "_Yes, the lamp, you foolish boy_," I thought gleefully. The hunger for power ate my heart as Iago squawked next to me. The idiotic blue genie materialized into the air in front of me, arms crossed and looking bored, rolling his eyes and such. I narrowed my own eyes. The genie would have been punished any other time, but now, I was in no mood to waste time on such things.

"Your wish is my command, master," he said, sounding resigned. Those words were music to my ears. I couldn't remember the last time that my twisted mind had been so happy. "Genie, no!" the street rat cried. I realized that I didn't even know his name. "Genie, yes!" I said just for good measure, mocking him with every last moment. His face stopped looking like he was constipated and switched to a look of resigned sorrow.

I was feeling completely triumphal then, but that was my mistake to ultimate power: I underestimated the rat. Thinking that I had won, I cackled evilly, carrying on for as long as breath allowed me, always wanting to try out the fanatical laughter. After all, what's the point of taking over the universe if you can't enjoy it, I figured. There was nobody to stop me except the street rat. His love, Jasmine and dressed in red, hung on my every whim and clutched my right arm as I was about to wish for the third thing I wanted…when I realized I didn't even know what I wanted.

Slowly, I contemplated and tried not to look too much like an idiot.

The street rat seized his opportunity and said, "But you're still not the most powerful being of all time, Jafar! The genie is." That enraged me, and triggered my fatal mistake. If I had not made it, then the kingdom, the universe, the princess, all would be mine. That street rat wouldn't be using that impudent tongue of his anymore, because he would be dead.

"Alright, genie," I roared. "I wish to become the most powerful genie of all time!" "Genie, don't do it, I wish for you to be free!" the rat screamed at the same time.

That was when several things happened at once.

The lamp teetered in the palm of my right hand, then flipped and clattered to the ground. It rung twice as it bounced, and then rolled to a rest. The genie started dancing with joy. And I roared in fury and rushed the rat, trying to strangle him with my bare hands.

I never got to him, though, because two delicate hands held me back. I turned in a red hot rage, to find the rat's beloved, the princess, clinging firmly to my arm. I snarled at her, "Let go, Princess." Jasmine smiled, and said, "Not today, Jafar, not today. I will not let you harm Aladdin." So that was his name. I shrugged. Well, at least I could abuse his name properly. I spat at her feet and easily wrenched my arm free. Princesses are never made for wrestling.

"So be it. I will not harm Aladdin…today," I said, trying to be sinister while curling my thin curly mustache around my forefinger. Jasmine fumed at me with pure loathing in her eyes. I secured my wiry fingers around her wrist and dragged her in front of the Sultana, not bothering to be formal. "Tell her you wish to wed me," I thundered. Maybe there still was a chance that I would get to be all-powerful. Jasmine crossed her arms, prying my fingers off of her wrist. "Never."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "You are stubborn, and foolish, to decline my wish, Princess." "I am neither in doing so, so-called Grand Vizier. I am the Princess, you still rank below me," she said, tossing her long hair over her shoulder. Our eyes faced each other down for a moment before I tore them away and shook my fist at the Sultana, who was sitting on her throne watching all of this happen.

"You will pay for this," I snarled at her. "All of you will."

With that, I swept out of the room, my red robes billowing around me.

…………….

Later on, I pounded my fist repeatedly on the oaken table in my private chambers, furious. At least the Sultana had let me keep my position here, for what reason, I could not comprehend. My twisted mind calculated another path to world domination as it tried to shut Iago's inane chatter into the background. However, each plan ended in a dead end. Finally, I let up and roared in frustration at the ceiling, "I HATE THIS WORLD!"

"Why?" said a feminine voice. I whirled.

In the middle of my room hovered a beautiful woman. She was pale green and transparent, and being so, inhumane. Her long, ebony locks were braided into a long plait. Her eyes were streaked in kohl, and a pale neon green color with long, black lashes. She was thin and wearing a simple black garment made from a single cloth and pinned at one shoulder with a jade clasp. Her fingers had gold rings on all of them.

"Who are you," I finally managed to whisper hoarsely. She seemed to face an internal struggle for a moment, before answering, "I am Jala, genie of the lamp."

I only gaped. Another genie, the answer to my prayers. I looked down to the wisp of smoke that she ended in, realizing that the dented, small gold lamp that the other genie had come out of was on the floor was where it led to. "But…but…that lamp belongs to another genie," I stammered. Jala smiled wryly. "He was freed by Aladdin, was he not? When a genie is freed, another is bound to take his place."

I shuddered, only then realizing the horrible fate that I had almost condemned myself to by wishing to become a genie. "Well, master?" she asked, obviously irritated. "What will your three wishes be? I can tell that you have been in contact with genies before." I opened my mouth, closed it again, opened it again. "Er, uh…" "Apparently not, you're either mute, or just stupid," she observed with a hint of amusement in her pale green eyes. I growled at her. "Nobody calls me stupid and gets away with it."

Jala shrugged. "Say what you wish. That is my only duty, and you cannot harm me." I collapsed onto my grand bed, realizing that every word she said was true.

"Let me think about my wish," I said to her. Suddenly, I didn't want to rule the universe anymore. It was strange, how I had worked toward that goal for years and years, and suddenly at that moment, I found that I had no wish to dominate the entire world…just yet, anyways.

Jala huffed and blew a long strand of hair away from her face.

"Hmmmm, alright. Kill that street rat Aladdin," I said. "Wish it," answered Jala. "Well, I wish that you would kill that street rat Aladdin," I said impatiently, sitting up. Jala winked. "Got you. And to think that I thought you knew about the wishing rules." "Oh no, not those," I moaned. Jala wagged her finger at me, something that I had come to become extremely irritated at. Well, at least Iago had fallen asleep halfway through this.

"Uh uh. I can't kill anybody, bring anybody back from the dead, or make anybody fall in love with you, for that matter," she said matter-of-factly. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. That's all very good," I said sarcastically. Jala raised an eyebrow. "Didn't your mother teach you some manners?" "What do you know about mothers?" I retorted. Jala fell silent, looking genuinely hurt.

I knew I shouldn't have cared, considering that she wasn't even human and was bound to act on my every whim. But I felt a stab of guilt. However, I didn't know quite how to apologize yet, so instead I fell into an embarrassed silence as Jala gave me one last, reproachful look and vanished back into the little lamp sitting on the floor.

**A/N: Please review!**


	2. Surprises

**Disclaimer: I do not own Aladdin in any way, shape, or form. It is copyrighted to…ahem…somebody-that-I-do-not-know.**

**A/N: I hope that somebody's reading this, because I feel like an idiot writing an author's note because there's a chance that this story is horrible and nobody wants to read it because it's too twisted to comprehend. And if you are reading this, please review to make me feel better. Wink, wink.**

**Chapter 2**

**Surprises**

**(Sorrah, Jasmine's Personal Handmaiden)**

"Dearest Sorrah, will you please brush my hair?" called Jasmine's voice from the next room of our apartment suite. "Yes, of course," I called back, picking up an ivory-edged brush from her dresser and hurrying into the next room, holding up my long, red skirts. I tucked the brush into my golden sash and swung my long, black braid over my shoulder. "Yes, Jasmine?" I asked, sticking my head into her bedroom door that was adjoined to my own.

Jasmine was sitting with her legs crossed on her bed. I was shocked to see that she was still wearing the red clothes that Jafar had made her wear a few days ago. "Princess," I stammered. "M-may I ask…" "Yes, Sorrah?" she asked, looking up from the scroll she was reading. "Why are you still wearing those clothes?" I asked, sitting down in a chair and taking out the comb. I loosed Jasmine's long hair and began to brush.

The Princess sighed. "It's a long story. Things have gone so fast these past few days that my mind's still struggling to keep up, if you know what I mean." I kept brushing, choosing to stay silent and let the chirping of birds outside of the stained glass window do the talking, while inside of the chambers, the only sound was the soft swish of the brush as it swept through Jasmine's long, raven-colored tresses.

"Sorrah?" said Jasmine. "Yes?" I replied, tying her hair back to the way that it used to be. "I know that you don't like Aladdin, but he will make a great Sultan," she said unexpectedly. I jumped. "You mistook my meaning, I was merely surprised that you-" Jasmine cut me off. "No, you don't need to lie. Besides, you're probably the only one in all the kingdom that would dare to argue with me, except the Mother and Jafar."

I didn't know what to make of that, so I reached for another red hair ribbon, much preferring the old, pale blue ones.

Jasmine stopped me. "No, it's alright. I'd like to keep it this way today." Jasmine turned around. I nearly gasped, because her personage was transformed when she left her hair half down. Though it was tied with a ribbon in the back, it fanned out around her shoulders and down to her elbows, gently waving. Her crown rested on the top of her head. "You look stunning," I said. Jasmine all but ignored me except for a small smile.

………………………………….

Jasmine and Aladdin's official wedding was supposed to be that day, as the first one was unpleasantly cut short. I was supposed to be Jasmine's only bridesmaid, as she claimed I was her closest friend, (figures, as she was never out of the palace before with the small exception of Aladdin). I had been clothed in a dark blue sari with moons on it, with a black silk cloth I wrapped around my head and clutched under my chin, with golden henna suns imprinted onto it.

The Sultana was at the front of the procession, waiting for Jasmine and me to come down the isle. The Sultan had died long ago, so there would be none of that. Aladdin was also up at the front, dressed just as he was when he was still pretending to be Prince Ali. Jasmine was still in the red attire, though she had switched the bottom for a long, trailing red skirt with a soft screen on top of it.

"Now, before I pronounce them man and wife, does anybody have any objections?" said the Sultana, glaring at Jafar as if daring him to say anything. He didn't, but as in the first wedding, Aladdin interrupted. "I object!" he stated. Jasmine looked at him incredulously, as if to question his sanity. I was on the verge of questioning his sanity too, until his next words shocked me to the bone.

"I cannot marry the Princess, because I do not love her," said the about-to-be-married Aladdin. There was a hush in the crowd as everybody turned to stare at Aladdin. The Sultana was also looking at him, amazed that after she had changed the law, after all the fights she had with Jasmine, after all the preparations and money required for this grand of a wedding, that the man was admitting he did not really love her daughter.

"I love another," continued Aladdin. I glanced at Jasmine's face, which had stayed oddly calm throughout all of this. "That is more fitting to my rank, which is a street rat, as I'm sure everybody knows about." At his place next to the throne, I saw the hint of a smirk on Jafar's face.

Aladdin turned to look at me. "Her handmaiden, Sorrah." I blinked, wide-eyed and stupid, at him. I was not hearing this, this wasn't happening. Since when did Jasmine's beloved choose to love me, and when had I been informed? Never. Wonderful. As Jasmine, and pretty much everybody else in the room, turned to stare at me, I clutched the cloth around my head tighter, squeezed my eyes shut, and waited to wake up from this nightmare.

When I opened them, I was still there.

………………………………….

The whole kingdom was in an uproar.

Me, being Jasmine's handmaiden's, job was to keep a close eye on her door. Throughout the day, the Sultana had tried various times to send people to fetch Jasmine, and finally, had come by herself. I was quite flustered to lock the Sultana of Agrabah out of her own daughter's room, but my orders came only from Jasmine, who had locked herself in her adjoined section of our suite and refused to come out.

I finally could not stand it anymore. I took a _midak_ and picked Jasmine's lock with it.

Inside, I found Jasmine slumped on her bed, still wearing the red clothing that Jafar had forced her to wear. Her hair spilled all over her face as she looked at me. "Sit with me, Sorrah," she said dully, not seeming to realize that I had just broken into her room. I sat down, obliging, next to her on the bed. Her face was grimy and tear-streaked. I clasped my hands respectfully in my lap and waited for Jasmine to speak.

"I knew, you know," she said quietly. "We argued about it for ages, but I finally realized that if I really do love him, I'll let him do what his heart says." She sobbed, unable to continue. We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence as I whispered, "I'm sorry, Jasmine. I truly had no idea." "Of course you didn't, Sorrah," she replied.

What should have been a joyous day of celebration for the kingdom had turned into one of the biggest political problems in the history of Agrabah.

And what was I going to do? I would end up in the deepest, darkest and dankest prison cell that there was in the palace if I was _lucky_ and the Sultana believed me and Jasmine when we claimed that I had no idea of Aladdin's supposed love for me.

As if sensing my thoughts, Jasmine suddenly said to me, "You must run away, Sorrah." "What?" I asked, totally taken aback. Though I had been born outside of the palace, I had been raised inside its walls of luxuries since the age of seven. I remembered little of the grimy outside world, and it was a dangerous place for me to go without experience.

Jasmine sat up and turned to me. "If you do not, my mother will either lock you up or have you executed, no matter what I will say to her to have you stay alive. You _must _run away!" "But-" "_Sorrah_! That is an order from your Princess. Do this one thing for me, please. You're all I have left, and I don't want to lose you to the prison cells," she whispered, clasping my wrist and staring pleadingly into my eyes.

I sighed.

"If it would please you, Jasmine." Jasmine slumped back onto the bed. "Gather your things. You must leave tonight, because I will go out of my room. All of the court's people will be gathered in the Grand Hall to hear what the Sultana will sentence you and Aladdin to. I will do what I can for Aladdin, but you are only a slave in the eyes of others. I could not stop any harm to you with all the power that I have."

I nodded, trying not to cry. Jasmine gave me a gentle push. "Hurry, pack your things, Sorrah." She hugged me. "I will miss you." I didn't answer, only rushed into my adjoined room and began throwing what little I wanted to keep into a small, lightweight bag.

As I came out, I was dressed as a young merchant boy. I had wrapped a band of long, dull tan cloth around my head for a turban and pinned it with one of Jasmine's dullest brooches. I wore simple, coarse clothes. I had even gone as far to draw on a light mustache with some kohl lying on my table.

"Goodbye, Sorrah." "May Allah bring you peace, Jasmine," I told her. Then I was out of the room, looking at the sunset out of the window, probably the last time that I would ever see it from the palace. It was my clock, seeing how much time that I had left before I must flee.

**A/N: Review as always, please.**


	3. All's Fair In Love and War

**A/N: I'm updating fast because this is the one story that I have inspiration for right now. All of the other ones are duds. Need to overcome writer's block!**

**Chapter 3**

**All's Fair in Love and War**

**(Aladdin)**

I was in chains.

The same two midget guards that had brought me into the palace had locked sturdy, iron handcuffs around my hands. I tugged absently on the rusty, old chain that held them together, not really expecting my efforts to be rewarded. I sat in one of the smaller dungeons, waiting for my trial to come and watching as the sunlight shafting in through the small window turned from bright yellow to gold to pink.

Finally, I heard the rusty squeak of the hinges on a door being opened. Two guards dressed in fancy purple vests of the royal army opened my door and hefted me up roughly. "Time for your trial, kid," said one of them. I was a head taller than him. Who was _he_ calling kid? I was dragged across the cobblestones of the prison cell, listening to the dank sounds of dripping grime.

Somehow, I was expecting to see Sorrah there with me, as she was involved in this whole thing too. I couldn't have stood watching her being executed. It was both a disappointment and relief when she wasn't there. I bowed my head, allowing the guards to drag me as long as they could. I did not want to look at Jafar's face, because he would be wearing a satisfied smirk. I did not want to look at the Sultana's, because hers would be stone-like and full of loathing.

"Aladdin," she hissed.

I did not reply, only stared at my princely shoes. "You broke my daughter's heart and chose to love another instead, after for you, the law was changed, Jasmine argued her voice hoarse, and hoards of money were spent. What should your punishment be?" Finally, I could bear it no longer. I tilted my head ever so slightly so that my long, black bangs covered my left eye and I could just glance at Jasmine's face.

She was immobile next to her mother, on the opposite side of Jafar. However, her eyes were red, and puffy, full of tears. I was about to let my held-in tears spill too. I never meant to cause her so much pain, knowing how much she loved me. But, the reason that we could never be together was as much a shock to me as it would be to Sorrah if I told her. I sighed. If only I could see her, just one last time before I died.

"You will not die," said the Sultana icily, seeming to enjoy keeping me in suspense of my fate. "You will be exiled outside of the palace walls. You may never return, on pain of death. Do you understand?" I did not move. Inside, I was rejoicing: I would live! "Do you understand?" the Sultana roared a second time. Feebly, I nodded my head up and down. "Guards!" said Jafar's voice.

Their grip tightened on my arms. I felt the fabric of my wedding outfit brushing against my arms as they hefted me up and dragged me toward a side entrance of the palace. "We will give you until darkness to get off of the palace grounds!" Jafar's voice called after us.

………………..

The sun had almost all but vanished behind the horizon as the guards left me in a large, grassy courtyard. Instantly, I opened the latch on the gate and ran across the ground at a lightning fast speed, toward freedom. Once I was outside on the deserted street, I took one last look at he magnificent turrets of the palace.

Hawkers selling their wares were calling out a last few hopeful cries of advertisement as they cleared up for the day. Taking off my fancy turban and switching my shirt for the old purple vest I used to wear, I started out into the street. There, I purposefully dusted up my new pants a bit. There was the bread stand that I had used to steal from, and the angry-looking baker when he saw several boys munching on his bread, unpaid for.

For the night, I supposed that I would have to settle in on the ground.

………………….

Something, or somebody was poking me.

It wasn't sharp, it was blunt, but still it was rather hard and I groaned, rolling over on the crusty ground. I pulled my arms lazily over my head and waited for the person to stop. However, they just kept poking me, in the back now. Finally, I let a few small shafts of sunlight spill through my fingers. "What?" I said groggily. "Greet the day, Laddie!" said a voice that I knew all too well. I shot up like a bullet.

"Genie?"

Sure enough, the pale blue djinn was standing with his large arms crossed, raising an ironic eyebrow. Next to him was a wizened old geeser that I knew all too well. "Adwin!" I cried in delight. He only nodded his head slightly and pulled his ragged brown cloak over his head. I realized that he must have been poking me with his stick.

"So you're staying with him nowadays?" I asked Genie, because Adwin was mute. My best friend shrugged. "Well, he's a right pain if you ask me, but I need a roof to stay under if you know what I mean." I laughed. Adwin the Elder had raised me as a child on the streets, when my parents had died. If he had never taken me in, I wouldn't have made it this far into life.

I started to swagger, like when I tried to be casual at the same time stealing a loaf of bread back in the good old days, where there were no politics, no palace…and no Jasmine. I sighed. Genie looked confused all of a sudden. "So, what are you doing back out here, Al?" he asked curiously. "Aren't you supposed to be snogging away with Jasmine?" I slapped Genie on the arm. "You pervert." Genie grinned widely. "Ten thousand years in a tin gives you time to think about all kinds of things." I shook my head and pinched the bridge of my nose. "I don't even want to know."

"So, how are you enjoying your freedom?" I asked quickly while Genie was distracted. I would prefer to not give him the content that I had been exiled out of the palace that I was once destined to live in. The Genie shrugged. "Well, I've been trying out new things, you know? I've taken up pottery, selling bread. I even tried on women's underwear!" he declared proudly. I stared at him, gaping. "You never cease to amaze me." "Well, I am a genie after all."

Adwin tugged on my arm. I noticed then that we were in front of his little modest hut. I bowed low to my former guardian. "Thank you." Adwin nodded in response and went around the back to get firewood for tonight's dinner. Genie tugged on my arm. "C'mon, Laddie, l'mme show ya around!" I shook my head. "You do remember that I lived here for thirteen years, right?" "Oh. That."

………………….

Dinner was some stale bread and a small chunk of roasted chicken for everybody. I ate greedily, having not eaten the entire day. Adwin and Genie watched me eating long after they were done. "So, tell me, Din," began Genie slowly. "How is it that you're out here?" I refused to answer. Instead, I stuffed a big piece of chicken into my mouth and swiveled around on the long log that I was using as a seat defiantly. Genie whispered to Adwin. "What do you call that? Denial."

"C'mon, Allie. You're our best friend!" protested the Genie. I heard Adwin tapping his walking stick on the ground. I sighed. There was no avoiding them.

"Well, I'm exiled from the palace." "WHAT?" roared the Genie, standing up. Adwin looked calm, as if he had expected this to happen. "But…you and Jasmine were in love, you were a prince…dude, what happened?" he said, looking at me with large eyes. I sighed. "It's a very long story." "Well, we're here to hear it," said Genie back, stubborn as ever.

So, we stayed up long into the night as the moon rose up as I told of how I had fallen in love with Sorrah, and the Sultana had exiled me out here. "Well, it's not so bad," said the Genie sympathetically. "Young love, it always ends this way," he muttered.

I ignored him completely and said, "Thanks for listening anyways, guys. I feel a lot better about the whole thing." Genie stopped me as I stood up to go inside the hut and sleep. "But, Aladdin," he whispered urgently. "If that's the real reason that you and Jasmine broke up, and not because of Sorrah…" I shook my head. "I don't want to talk about it. Sorrah had really nothing to do with this. I hope she's alright…no, I don't want to marry Jasmine for an entirely different reason."

Genie nodded. "I can sense the unease in your heart." I looked at him in surprise. "Wow, you're being _serious_?" Genie shrugged. "Yeah, well, I decided to act more responsible now that you're sort-of my master again. Just, Adwin still has two wishes left, and it's a little hard to communicate with him, if you know what I mean." "What did he wish for?" Genie snorted. "Food, what else?"

……………….

The next morning, I stretched my arms outside of the hut and stopped dead in my tracks. The Genie and Adwin hastily stood up from the logs in front of the house, looking guilty as if they had been conferring about something privately that they didn't want me to know about. But that wasn't the reason…the Genie was dressed in a hot pink tutu over baggy pants that were supposed to be women's underwear. He also had on a sari.

"You're…you're A CROSSDRESSER!" I yelled in disbelief. "Al, keep it down!" said the Genie. "You're GENDER CONFUSED!" I continued.

Genie sighed and said, "Well, I guess I better wait for you to quiet down."

Finally, when Adwin had seated me comfortably on a log and we'd told the neighbors my outburst was from drunkenness, the Genie said to me urgently, "Lad, we're going to get you into the palace. Do what you have to do with Jasmine's, er, problem." I stared at him, wide-eyed. "What?" I said weakly.

Genie sighed. "Well, I guess I'm going to have to repeat it several times to get it through your thick skull. We are going to dress you up as a woman and-" "Wait, now hold it just a second there," I said slowly. "You're going to dress me in _that_ and expect the guards to let you in?" Genie snorted. "Of course not." I sighed in relief. "We've got make-up too!" he said triumphantly, looking proud, pulling out kohl, red lip paint, and some powder. I groaned.

"Kill me."

**A/N: Please review as always!**


	4. A Royal Duty

**Disclaimer: I do not own Aladdin.**

**Chapter 4**

**A Royal Duty**

**(Sultana Kamaria)**

I settled back into my throne and watched the last peasant being escorted out of the throne room by a few guards.

"Well, that was the last one," I sighed, pretending to be interested in the fancy gold and crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling high, high above me. Jafar, standing straight by my throne in his black and red robes, bowed low. "Yes, Your Majesty. Shall I call in the guard to escort you to your chambers?" I shook my head. "No. Would it please you to escort me yourself today, Grand Vizier?" Jafar looked surprised but did not object.

As Jafar led me toward my chambers, I told him, "No, not that way today. I wish to speak with Jasmine on the way." Jafar nodded his head. "As you wish."

Jasmine's door was up ahead. I knocked on it, calling for the umpteenth time that day, "Jasmine! Jasmine, dearest, please, unlock your door." I almost expected Sorrah to come out and tell me to go back to my chambers, but instead, it was as if there was nobody in the room at all, all but for the faint sniffle that I heard. Sighing, I pounded harder on the door. "Jasmine, you're not doing yourself any good locking me out."

I heard a click. The door swung open, and Jasmine stood there with her hair plastered to her face by tears. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she was still wearing the red attire that Jafar had made her wear. I suspected that she hadn't put energy into changing and looking more like the Princess that she was in a few days. "Jasmine, please, pull yourself together!" I said, exasperated like any mother would be.

Jasmine didn't answer. In fact, she looked like she was making every intention to push the door back open and step inside, turning the lock again. She did, but not before I forced myself inside first. It didn't occur to me that Jafar was still waiting outside, nor would it have mattered.

I sat Jasmine down on the bed and looked at her puffy but still wide and beautiful brown eyes. "Jasmine, you're my daughter, but a Princess nonetheless. You must behave like one, dearest." I put my hands on her shoulders when Jasmine tried to get up, seeming guilty about something. Another matter occurred to me then. "Sweetheart, where is Sorrah?" "She's, uh, Sorrah's gone, errr…" Jasmine trailed off and looked at me guiltily.

"You wouldn't have." I stood up and stood my daughter down. She might be in distress, but this was too much. "Mother, I have every right not to act like the stuffy Princess people expect me to be, at least for a few days. My true love has just betrayed me, I'll never see my best friend again, Jafar's going to weasel himself into marrying me, you'll make me do it, and I will spend my life being the cold Sultana that I want to be least."

I stared at Jasmine, never really truly understanding what went on in her head. Now that it was out in the open, I wasn't really closer to understanding it. At least I could help her with some of the troubles. "Jasmine, I am not going to make you marry Jafar." She looked at me in disbelief. "You say that now, to make me feel better. Just see, in another year, I will be sitting on the throne next to the biggest-"

Her statement was smoothly intercepted. Jafar had strode into the room, quite uninvited. He bowed low to me. "Quite sorry, if I, might I say, interrupted something," he said, staring straight at Jasmine and smirking.

Jasmine glared at him, but I chose to act as if nothing at all had happened. "Jafar, I'm sorry," I said politely, trying to act as regal as possible. "Jasmine, I will be back later," I said, and took Jafar's offered arm and stepped smartly out of her chambers. As soon as I left, I could hear broken sobs coming from within and wished that I had never left. However, the warm feeling of Jafar's arm distracted me. I felt my neck burning.

"Majesty? Is everything alright?" I glanced at Jafar, who didn't even look like he wanted an answer to his stiff question. I answered anyways, just to annoy him. "Yes, perfectly. My daughter's gone into depression, the peasants are going to start a revolt, and your insane _parrot_ just pooed on my shoulder." I broke free from Jafar and attempted to wipe Iago's waste off of my shoulder as Jafar allowed the colorful bird to land on his arm.

Jafar raised an eyebrow at me. I could tell that he was trying very, VERY hard to keep a straight face. It was just the type of thing that Jafar's sick humor found funny. I stared down my nose at him with my most menacing, (and recently perfected) Sultana glare and swept off to my chambers, which thankfully, were just around the corner.

…………………….

The next morning, I woke up with the fancy sheets tangled all around me. I was cranky, disoriented, and probably had dragon breath as I stumbled, standing and allowing the room to stop spinning before taking a cautious step forward toward the washroom. The handmaiden rushed forward to help me, but I stopped her. "It's alright, I can do this," I muttered, both to her and to myself.

Just as I had made it to the reassuring frame of the bathroom door, bugle calls sounded outside loudly. I was so startled that I nearly fell over again. There was a knock at the door. With a questioning look at me, the handmaiden motioned to the door as if to open it. I nodded at her. The small girl pulled open the door to reveal Razoul, captain of the guard. "Your majesty," he said, saluting smartly.

I smiled. "Hello, Razoul. Is there anything you would like to report?" "Yes, Your Majesty," said the ramrod straight guard. He saluted again and bowed deeply to me. I tried to look more regal as I replied, "Well, what is it?" Razoul's face fell and he hesitated slightly before saying, "Er, the street rat that we exiled a few days ago is at the gates, m'lady. He's currently being held by two of my men. Should we stick to his original punishment?"

For a moment, I was so surprised that I couldn't answer. The street rat, he was back? I had clearly stated my dislike toward him, and his punishment if he was to return to palace grounds: on pain of death. I flashed back to that day, only a few days ago. He couldn't have forgotten something like that, it was impossible, unless he was daft somehow. That meant that he was here with a purpose…

"Well, show him into the royal entrance hall," I ordered Razoul. Razoul's eyes widened. "B-but, surely…" I roared at him, in no mood for arguing, "Do not question the orders of your Sultana! Now go!" Razoul bowed low and scurried out of the room, murmuring, "Right away, Majesty, right away." I smiled. Having power was pretty fun sometimes.

I summoned the handmaiden back, and she soon dressed me and fixed up my hair. I walked out of the room feeling quite refreshed and ready to greet the day, including the troubles that were sure to come with it. Sure enough, on his knees and held by two guards at the elbows, was the street rat, right in the middle of the grand entrance hall. I swept in, the cool air rustling my skirts. "So, I see that you have come back," I said, sinking into the soft cushioning of the throne.

What surprised me most was the garb that the street rat had clothed himself in: women's underwear, what looked like a tutu, and a sari. "Hmmm, I see that you have much to explain also," I added hastily. One of the guards pretended to sneeze, but it was a bad attempt. I knew that he was snorting. The street rat looked up at me sheepishly, red. "Er, I beg pardon, Your Majesty," he said shakily.

Sadly, I shook my head.

"I cannot make an exception to the rule: that who comes back after being exiled is on pain of death, not even for the almost-Sultan of Agrabah. I will not torture you: you will die quickly. Feel lucky, because my daughter still loves you. I will make sure that you know exactly how much pain and distress you caused: Jasmine won't leave her room, I am sad to see her like this, and Sorrah…" I saw a flicker in the boy's eyes. "She has run away into the city. If we find her, she will die," I concluded. Aladdin's eyes widened.

"Please," said the rat, whispering now. "My death wish is to see Jasmine, just one more time," he said. I saw no harm in that, so I replied, "Alright, but at sunset, you will die." With that, I dismissed him, guards and all.

……………………..

Back in my chambers, I was debating. Jasmine was sure to try and save the street rat's life, even at the cost of her own. He no longer loved her, but Jasmine remained ever loving toward him. I wondered how broken her heart would be when she saw him at her door, coming back to visit her. I shook my head to clear it of such thoughts. I could not worry about that. The law was the law, and I could not begin making exceptions to it whenever I favored somebody's feelings. The entire Kingdom would collapse if I did.

Instead, I found my mind wandering to a place that was the second-most thought that I didn't want to think about right now: Jafar. I heated up behind the ears again just thinking of Jafar's arm, looped right around my own. "You cannot marry," I reminded myself. "Now that Jasmine is the heir to the throne, and your husband is dead, I cannot marry again." Sighing, I laid back into the covers.

This wasn't right. It was my royal duty to execute Aladdin…and try to forget all thoughts of a certain Grand Vizier.

**A/N: Please review! No, I have not received writer's block. It's just that I found a little trouble getting "inside" of the Sultana's character. I was aiming for regal, motherly, and trying to be good to her subjects, and please review to tell me if I did a horrible job or a good job at it, because I tried my best. I'm not sure who the next chapter's point of view will be from. However, I know that it will NOT be the Sultana's.**


	5. Family Feuds

**A/N: This chapter should be more humorous. I have decided to do it in Jafar's point of view.**

**Chapter 5**

**Family Feuds**

**(Jafar)**

I sat in my chambers on the edge of an unmade bed. I took off the heavy red and black turban perched jauntily on top of my head and rested it in my lap. Catching my reflection's eye in a cracked mirror across the room that the slaves had not yet moved out, I threw the turban at it and _missed_, which was something that I hadn't done with a target this big for a long time: throwing stylus at running slaves was quite amusing, and I had become quite the marksman.

Finally giving up, I risked a small, sneaky sideways glance at the dented, tiny gold lamp resting on the dresser. The spout was long and curving, and it might have been me just being paranoid, but it seemed that a small wisp of green smoke was lazily swirling out of the top. However, it still nearly knocked me off of the bed when Jala materialized on top of the lamp, looking bored and uninterested.

I grudgingly pushed myself back onto the edge of the bed and smoothed the scalp of my bald head, forcing myself to remain calm. Was this genie going to continue making a fool of I, Jafar, the Grand Vizier of Agrabah? I didn't think so. "What do you want?" I asked coldly, trying to sound superior and get her to shrink back into that lamp where she had come from in the first place. Jala, however, showed no signs of backing down. "Well, you _are_ my master," she said, resentfully, I thought, not seeming to care at all for the fact.

"So?" I prompted, knowing what was coming.

Jala stared exasperatedly at me out of wide green eyes. "Are you going to ask for your three wishes, or keep me waiting for an eternity? It's not very comfortable to have a master and not be granting wishes for us, you know," she said. I snorted. "And you think that I would care for your comfort?" Jala raised an eyebrow. "Well, I didn't think of you as the type that would anyways." With that, she shrank back into the lamp.

That left me, listening to rain pelting against the window and feeling slightly guilty about Jala's present condition, (though I'd never be caught admitting that. An evil record has to be kept up, you know). I pushed myself up and retrieved the turban from behind the cracked dresser. I was due to a visit to that street rat, Aladdin. After his supposed "talk" with his past beloved, (I sneered at the thought), Razoul was supposed to have escorted him down to the dungeons. However, Razoul was a young fool, and I was sure that he was going to mess things up.

I swept out of the chambers, secretly relieved to be rid of such an enclosed space. The dungeons were way underground, so I tried to enjoy freedom while I could. Rain continued to beat relentlessly against the roof. Aladdin's cell, as I had ordered, was under the deepest security: I was taking no chances. The sound of dripping water was magnified here, as there were un-patched holes in the wall that let in runoff. Drip, drip, it made the dusty gray stones of the prison cells turn pitch black and slippery. The water sloshed slightly around my black boots as I walked.

"Jafar!"

I recognized his voice before I saw him. The street rat was behind bars, with three hefty guards and Razoul himself supervising. "Quiet, you!" snarled Razoul through the iron bars. "You will speak when spoken to." Aladdin looked back defiantly. I smirked. "It's alright, Razoul. I enjoy some spirit in my prisoners. That way, you can watch as they tone down and become insane. Soon, they start rocking back and forth and muttering nonsense." I began to pace, just for the fun of irritating my enemy, gloating. "Who's got the last laugh now, huh?" I spat at his feet.

"I demand an audience with the Princess!" He shouted at me from the cell. I raised my thin eyebrow high in amusement. "Oh? And did you not just see her Majesty before you were confined here?" Something flickered in the street rat's eyes. His defenses were faltering. I liked this, and took advantage of it to provoke him some further. "Oh, I see. She shut you out, afraid of you dirtying her chambers with your grimy feet," I hissed into his face, curling my mustache slightly around my finger, an old habit.

Mr. Street Rat didn't speak back, in fact, he did not even move to my words. I didn't like that.

"Well? Tell me!" I roared at him. "Why do you seek audience with the Princess?" Aladdin flinched slightly at my sudden change of mood, but otherwise made no indication that he had heard me. Instead, he trained his eyes resolutely on a hole in the wall behind me, following the slight trickle of water that swam around my boots. I cracked my knuckles in frustration, something that I considered to be an amateur's gesture.

Just as I was about to verbally abuse him some more, there was a rush of air from behind me in the hallway. "Aladdin?" said a shrill voice. "_Oh no, not her…_" I mentally groaned. "Aladdin!" The Princess flew into the room and grabbed two of the bars holding him back. "Jasmine?" the street rat cried out in disbelief. Jasmine turned to me, then, as if first noticing my presence, her eyes burning with fury. "Let him go," she said in the lowest and most deadly voice next to mine that I had ever heard. "Why?" I asked, trying not to let my surprise leak into my voice.

Jasmine faced Razoul, ignoring me. That was one of the many things that I just couldn't stand: being ignored. "Let him loose," she said.

Razoul glanced uncertainly from me to the Princess, and then back again. "Err…" he said, thoroughly confused whether to answer a girl who held the kingdom in her palm's order to a guy who would probably banish him, let alone letting him live if he was lucky. "I'm sorry, Princess," he said finally deciding. "My orders come from Jafar."

He probably was shuddering from the evil glint that had entered my eye then, but then again, Razoul was like that. "Exxxxceelent," I drawled out the word, allowing myself the full pleasure of gloating over Jasmine's crestfallen face. Only to be stopped by surprise. And fear.

For hovering next to her, her arms crossed and blowing a strand of wayward blond hair out of her eye…was another genie.

She was hot pink, had platinum blond and straight hair, blue eyes, and _freckles_. She had many, many multicolored, silver, and gold bangles strung along her arm. She also had a black garment, identical to Jala's, except it was held up by a quartz clasp. She batted her long eyelashes. My eyes fell on a golden lamp, exactly the size and shape of Jala's but for a small but protruding dent at the top, stuffed into Jasmine's sash. Catching where my eyes were, she hastily stuffed it deeper into the fabric.

"Hm. Razoul, you and your men may go." Razoul knew me too well to question my decisions, but I felt him giving me an odd look as he led his guards out of the room. Now it was just me, Jasmine, and the street rat…and that genie. I wondered why I had not noticed her there before. Then, I realized that she had just come out of the lamp, the way that Jala did. Speaking of Jala, her lamp was currently hidden under the black belt of my robes.

The genie whistled, uninterested in the interesting situation, her arms crossed. I raised my eyebrow higher than they usually were.

"I see that you have a friend," I said, trying desperately to hide my surprise. It was undignifying for me to be surprised. Jasmine scoffed. "I see that you've met Haillie, my genie." I prayed that Jala wouldn't choose this moment to pop out for a few stretches of _her_ lamp, when I replied, "Genie. Wow." I might have sounded sarcastic without meaning to, but whatever it was, Jasmine rolled her eyes.

It was too late for me to hide when a wisp of green smoke emerged next to me out of thin air, and became Jala. She yawned and glared at me. "I thought I told you to hurry up and make your wish, _master_," she said scathingly. I wanted to put my head in my hands and moan about how the world was all against me. As for street rat here, he was gaping from me to Jasmine, back and forth, with unsuppressed astonishment.

"Hey, and I was all, like, he's so, like ugly, girl, you should like, totally, like dump him!" said the hot-pink genie, whipping off what turned out to be a wig. Her real hair was wavy and honey-colored. "What's wrong with her…" I hissed to Jala. Jala looked uncomfortable and cleared her throat. "What's up with you?" I snarled in her ear. Jala cleared her throat again. "Ahem. She's, er, my sister." I felt myself warming up. I coughed. "Oh. Er. Yes." I sounded pathetic. Jala coughed. "Yes. You see, ever since her lamp fell off of a cliff and got dented, she has…._special needs_," she whispered.

I began to become wary. "What do you mean, special needs?" Jala sighed, and just shrugged her shoulder toward Haillie. "You'll see what I mean." Jasmine had stood there, mortified. It had seemed to escape their notice that me and Jala existed. Jasmine and the street rat were sharing a look so intense that it made my eyes, (and my heart) ache.

Whatever it was, they both had a lot of explaining to do.

'**A/N: Please review!**


	6. Genies Unleashed

**Disclaimer: I do not own Aladdin.**

**Slow updates will probably not be due to writers block. It is fanfiction's fault for the document uploader not working for days at a time.**

**Chapter 6**

**Genies Unleashed**

**(Aladdin)**

I wasn't believing my luck.

For one, this could all be a dream. I fervently wished for that not to be the solution to how I was sitting on Sorrah's former bed next to the Grand Vizier and across from the Princess, also known as the former love of my life. It was an uncomfortable situation to be in for one: sitting in a room with your dumpee and the man who wants you dead more than anything else in the world.

But that wasn't my miracle. By some unknown force, Jasmine had managed to rescue me from the dank chambers of the prison cells, where Razoul eyed me with eyes that looked like they were constantly on the verge to turn red. I didn't like the eerie glint of sunlight on his sword every time he shifted. I also suspected that he angled the hilt like that just to torture me: hour after hour after hour.

When you're alone like that with things like the stuff that I have to think about, it would be enough to drive a normal man insane. However, I am no normal man. Besides the fact that I was still in the pink woman's attire, I had a certain Genie to help me, and I had almost become Sultan of Agrabah.

Now, the minutes seemed to tick by in eternities. Jafar wanted an explanation, I could feel it radiating off of his very robes as they rustled slightly next to me. The burden of the secret that me and the Princess shared weighed down on the room and seemed to stifle the very air that I breathed. Suddenly, I wished for the company of somebody that wasn't hostile to me, and right now, the only two people who seemed to fit into that category were Genie and Adwin.

At last, Jafar spoke.

"Well, are you two lovebirds going to tell me what exactly is going on, or will I have to take you to the torture cells?" he asked smoothly, as if asking about the weather. Jasmine flinched, but glared at the Grand Vizier. "You have no right to torture me." Jafar smirked. "Not physically, no, I do not. I do, however, have the power to torture your little friend here," he motioned to me, "And torture your heart as you watch."

Something flickered in Jasmine's eyes, and she fell silent. I felt the hands of guilt squeeze my stomach. It was obvious that she still cared for me, though I couldn't say the same truthfully about her. My sigh was surprising into the silence, but I felt like I was letting out all of the pressure.

"Alright, I will tell you," I said, not daring to lift my eyes. I could feel Jasmine's sense of betrayal and sorrow. "Aladdin, no!" she whispered brokenly. I did not dare to shift my eyes off of the floor, though it was tempting to see her expression. "Don't do this to me." It was in the same broken whisper, and yet this time I found something different: was the Princess of Agrabah _begging_ me?

I took a deep breath. This wasn't right, I had to tell somebody. This was the whole reason that I no longer loved Jasmine, and not entirely because of Sorrah. I felt the need to lift the blame off of her head, to insure her safety.

"Jasmine…she has a genie, as you know," I began abruptly. "And…she is not the real Princess. Her first and only wish for the genie was to make her Princess of Agrabah. Before that, she was but a street rat like myself." I felt the Grand Vizier's body stiffen next to me. The turban shaded his eyes, so I was denied the privilege of reading them. This must have been a great shock for him.

"Then, the Sultana…?" he trailed off. I shook my head. Jasmine had already explained this part to me. "The Sultana is the rightful ruler of Agrabah." Jafar seemed to consider this, and then he nodded haltingly. "Well, this was…unexpected," he murmured. I continued to stare at my toes, poking through my shoes and dared not to utter a single sound as the taller and much thinner man next to me mused, and my former true love crumpled with a broken heart sat frozen in front of me.

…………………………….

Jasmine and Jafar had seemed to work out a deal, and if it was mutual, it was not for me to judge.

The deal was: if Jafar was not to tell anybody that Jasmine had wished herself into the throne line, then nobody would be told about Jafar's genie. "Under the condition that you don't do anything like you tried last time with it," Jasmine warned. "We will see if I choose to follow your conditions, Princess…and if I don't, then there is nothing you can do about it, for I will expose you for what you really are," Jafar retorted silkily.

This was all happening too fast for my brain to catch up, so I gave up trying to update it, and instead just became five senses, storing away information for later to calculate when I made my escape out of the palace. The plan once out there was simple: survive, and find Sorrah…_if she's still alive_, said a small, pinched nagging voice at the back of my mind. I purposefully shut it away.

Things happened quite fast after that.

Jala and Haillie, apparently, had not seen each other for decades. Their reunion was less than happy, as Haillie continued to babble on about some girl who picked the wrong genie to fall in love with, and Jala mainly sat by and looked annoyed. It was easy for me to tell that she still loved her wayward sister, even though she was_ special_. Jala was not the type to hate anybody for being annoying. Jafar, however, was and soon gave up trying to be in the same room for longer than ten seconds with the hot-pink genie.

The day after my confession of Jasmine's fete of wishing, I sat down in her chambers. She had gone out for an afternoon walk, and Jafar was absent. It was just me, and two very bored genies.

I was curious as to how their world worked, as I had never really questioned Genie about it. "How does somebody become a genie?" I asked curiously. Jala shrugged. "Well, either a person wishes to become a genie, or one is just formed in a long-forgotten lamp." "How?" I asked, fascinated. "Well, the number of genies in this world never increases or decreases," said the green genie. "When a genie is destroyed, another is formed. When a genie is formed, one is destroyed." I was starting to get the logistics of it.

"Our magic only works on ourselves when we don't have a master that we're bound to," giggled Haillie. I was surprised to hear her talking sense. Jala looked pretty amazed too. "Jasmine hasn't made a wish in over seventeen years!" she said, sounding delirious again. I looked to Jala for advice.

Her sister sighed. "You see, being bound to a master for too long without them making wishes can be…unhealthy to a genie." She gestured pointedly toward her sister, who was once again talking to thin air. I nodded slowly, eyeing Haillie oddly. "I see what you mean." Jala gave an odd sigh, with emotions mixed up into it that I did not quite understand. "Jafar is not a good master for me. He does not make wishes." I was relieved to hear that Jafar was postponing world domination, but it was fishy all the same.

"It is uncomfortable for me, to be able to grant wishes but with nobody to wish them. It's like getting a toy that you've always wanted, yet you cannot play with it until a certain time that is determined by the person that you hate most." Jala subsided into silence, and I didn't mind. It gave me time to digest what she had just explained to me. Jala's green orbs were far off, foggy. She was thinking about something, but what?

Right now, I was very confused. I wanted to find Sorrah, I wanted Jasmine to forgive me, and I wanted to make sense of the world…and most of all, I wanted to get out of the pink tutu and the woman's underpants.

Was that too much to ask?

**A/N: Please review! I did the best that I could, considering that I've got something big planned for next chapter, hint, hint. It will be slightly disturbing…in a good way I suppose. Sorrah's point of view will have to wait for a little while, because it will be either in Jafar's point of view or possibly one of the genies.**


	7. A Secret Love

**Disclaimer: I definitely do not own Aladdin. However, I do own Jala, Adwin, and Sorrah. Haillie is a creation of Halo.At.Heart/DisturbedAvocado. (that has an underscore in it, it just won't show up.) Sorrah is based off of another friend of mine who is also on fanfiction. Jala, however, is completely my own creation as is Adwin. The Sultana is sort-of my character and sort-of not: after all, all I did was change his, er, her gender.**

**Chapter 7**

**A Secret Love**

**(Jala, genie of the lamp)**

I sighed.

It was actually quite uncomfortable and boring inside the tiny, golden lamp that I had been tied to. It was a tugging bond, and I could not stray too far from either the lamp nor my master. Sadly, I thought of Haillie, alone in her room and talking to people in the air that did not even exist. Suddenly, I felt very, very lucky compared to my hot-pink and eccentric sister.

The door to Jafar's chambers creaked open, and I jumped. The tall man swept in and only glanced in my direction, as I had floated out of the lamp, before collapsing into a chair and putting his head into his hands. "What, got rejected by a girl?" I said sarcastically. Jafar looked up and glared at the wall. "Be quiet, Jala," he said in a deadly voice. I was not one to heed warnings, but this one was not a warning. It was a threat.

Iago, Jafar's pet parrot, circled me in the air curiously. "Be quiet, Jala," he echoed. "Iago, come back here," said Jafar. "Iago, come back here," the colorful parrot mimicked. However, he came back to perch on his master's arm. _Master_. The word haunted me, endlessly reminding me of the three wishes that Jafar had yet to make me grant. As much as I did not want to grant a wish of somebody like Jafar, it was my nature and I was beginning to feel slightly nauseous.

"Please," I whispered.

Jafar half turned in his chair, though still not looking directly at me. "Please, just ask for one wish." Jafar sighed and turned all the way to look at me. His brown eyes seemed to scrutinize my face. "Jala, tell me," he said suddenly. "How did you become a genie?" The question startled me so much that I was taken aback and at a temporary loss for words. "What?" I asked blankly. Jafar seemed slightly irritated now. "I said, how did you become a genie? You might call me mute and stupid, but you are most definitely deaf."

I felt an unnecessary pang at his words, though I knew that he was just playing my own game right back at me.

The story of how I had become a genie was much more complex than most. I had been human, once, so I knew how it felt to be in one's shoes. Jafar was waiting for my explanation, not really suspecting that I planned to answer him, I knew. I sighed. "It is a long story. Do you have time to hear it all?" Jafar's face twisted into an expression that I had never seen before: a smile. Though it was terrifying, it was a happy smile none the less.

"I am here to listen," he replied calmly. With that, I started into my story, one that I had not relived for many, many years.

………………………………..

I had been a young girl of seventeen. Haillie and I had actually been sisters as humans. It was a rare case to have a sibling as a genie, but as in our case, it was possible. We had been the daughters of a poor sheep herder on the edge of Agrabah, so long, long ago. Our mother, I remembered had died when I was very little. It hurt still, very, very much, to think of her.

My father was always away, out in the fields. He never had very much time for me and Haillie, so we tended to look after ourselves. One day, when we were up in the highlands in spring when the blueberries sprung out in the bushes, Haillie and I were separated. The ripest blueberries were in a special meadow that I had kept a secret from everybody, but now I felt guilty for hiding it from her, my closest friend.

By the time that I had noticed she was missing, it was already sunset. "Haillie!" I called her name repeatedly into the darkening forest, but there was never a reply. I started to worry, more about Haillie, but still a good portion was for myself. Wolves came out into the mountains at night, and I was sure that they would like nothing better than to taste a tender morsel like me or Haillie…especially when we were separated.

Suddenly, I whirled on a sound in the meadow.

At the edge of the trees, surrounding me, were many, many glowing yellow and green eyes. Wolves! There was a pack of them. They crept, slunk silently out of the trees and surrounded me. By then, I was too terrified to scream. I had nothing to protect myself with, not even a stick. There were nine of them. The pack leader, a huge, muscular black male that seemed to swallow up the night, snarled. His mate, an auburn and white slender female, howled into the night air. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.

At that, they pounced.

I couldn't deny that it was painful, so painful when one bit into my arm. I felt a warm, sticky substance flowing down my limb, and heard a sickening crunch as one of them broke my leg. As everything started to turn black, I saw a shape in front of me. Something that looked like a woman. The only thing on my mind then was survival, so the first words that left my mouth were, "Please, I wish to live…"

Right then, I didn't know that it was a genie, but my wish was granted. The genie made me live the only way that it knew how: it turned me into another genie. Apparently, it was the first thing that had come to her mind.

And that was how I came to become immortal.

………………………….

At the end, Jafar stayed quiet for a very long time.

"But…how did the genie know that you wanted to live forever?" I paused. "Because she was my sister." Jafar's eyes widened. "Haillie? But how did she…?" I sighed. "That is a question that will never be answered. Haillie was already slightly delirious from that situation, and her enslavement to Jasmine just made it worse. Please, just make your first wish," I begged Jafar.

The Grand Vizier, a thin man, mused, curling his black mustache around his forefinger. It was a habit that I noticed he could not break. "But…I do not know what to wish for," he began. I sighed. "Anything. Something simple, please, I just want to grant a wish. As long as you still have one wish left, I am forever your slave." Jafar did not smile this time, he smirked. "That sounded almost romantic."

I glared at him. "If you think that I could ever love somebody like you, then I'm afraid that you're horribly mistaken." Jafar shrugged. "Just a thought." It might have been just a thought, but it made me infuriated, and I shrank back into the lamp.

……………………….

That night, I was awakened by a noise that only a genie could make.

"Jala?"

I knew that voice anywhere: it was Haillie! I gladly rose out of the lamp. Sure enough, my hot pink sister glittered in Jafar's chambers. "How did you get away?" I asked. Haillie smiled secretively. "No time for that. There's somebody that I would like you to meet." "Who?" I asked, wanting Haillie just to be up front. Haillie smiled that annoying smile again. "Not here, outside." "What about Jafar?" I asked nervously. "I don't think that you'll have to worry about him," said Haillie impatiently, gesturing to the bed. With a start, I realized that it was empty.

Now, Haillie had me hooked. I couldn't just deny her when she led me out of the room by her wrist. I was surprised, (and delighted), when I left behind my lamp with ease.

My sister led me through winding corridors and side alleys inside the palace. I marveled at its size, having never been out of Jafar's room except for the wet dungeons. It was glorious, full of gold and paintings and jewels and elaborate sofas that lined the hallways with tasseled pillows that I bet felt like clouds to sit upon.

At last, we appeared out in fresh night air in a certain eastern courtyard. In the middle, with his back turned to me, was somebody who was unmistakably inhumane. "Haillie," I whispered slowly. "Don't tell me that's another…?" Haillie smiled again, and this time it was toothy, just as the blue guy turned around. He bowed low to me. "Genie, at your service." He had a small black ponytail, but I instantly liked him. He turned out to be easy to get along with, but was a horrible flirt when it came to Haillie.

"Darling, you are so beautiful," he cooed, cupping her chin. Haillie slapped away his hand and continued her conversation with an invisible person. I stared incredulously at the genie who liked my sister. Though I was secretly glad that somebody besides myself and Jasmine could love her, this was uncalled for! He only winked at me. "I will never be disappointed or feel rejected when she is around," he whispered. Ok, now, that was just plain cheesy.

We climbed up onto the battlements made of hardened adobe clay and painted white with peeling plaster that still needed to be fixed, using overgrown ivy. We sat on top of the battlements with me in the middle, Haillie on the right side of me and the new Genie on my left side. Apparently, he'd brought popcorn. Something interesting was about to happen, and they just wouldn't tell me what. I shrugged. While I waited, might as well grab some popcorn.

It was just then, lounging on the battlements with my two genie friends, when I heard it.

It might have been able to shatter glass, but I wouldn't know. From far away, I heard somebody singing a horribly familiar song: A Whole New World. Then, in the distance of the horizon, I saw a carpet coming in, the same purple one that had apparently bore Aladdin and Jasmine so long before. Except…oh my eyes, they burned. It had the oddest pairing on it: none other than my master the Grand Vizier and the Sultana of Agrabah.

As I watched, horrified and transfixed by the show, the Sultana slipped and tipped over, her "world" trailing into a scream. "Curse you, Jafar!" I was able to catch. Genie stifled a chuckle next to me. Then he reached over my lap and batted his eyelashes at Haillie. "Since they didn't work out, maybe we will? I'm really warming up to you," he cooed. Haillie took one look and slapped him. A little too hard. The Genie fell off of the battlement without a scream and landed with a large, dramatic dust cloud. "Oops. Sorry!" Haillie called. She really didn't know her own strength.

Well, back on the scene on the horizon, Jafar had yelled back to the falling shape in the sky that was the Sultana, "Well, you were too fat!" "Well you were too skinny!" said the Sultana, sounding fainter by the minute. Then with another dust cloud, the Sultana of Agrabah landed without dignity on the dirt floor of her people. Jafar, as I watched, overbalanced and also fell off.

Oh, love is blind. Love is blind. It was especially blind when I felt a pang in my chest that felt regrettably familiar as a human emotion.

Yes. And it's name sounded something like jealousy.

**A/N: It was extra long, so I better get reviews, guys!**


	8. Unveiled Identities

**Disclaimer: I don't own Aladdin.**

**The plot has now officially begun!**

**Chapter 8**

**Unveiled Identities**

**(Jafar)**

The next morning, I awoke feeling disoriented. Very disoriented, and confused.

I was hoping fervently that the fiasco with the carpet and the Sultana had been a dream, because it was quite crazy to become true. Groaning, I put my hand to my head, realizing that I was also nursing the mother of hangovers, and migraines too. Last night had been a banquet, and Razoul had apparently taunted me into drinking a little too much wine. My eyes widened, a few clips from the bonaza coming back.

Finally deciding that I really didn't want to get up after all, I sank back onto the bed. I was blessed by Allah if the Sultana didn't remember any of that, because if she did, then I would be lucky to escape from the court with my head still intact. Jala emerged from her lamp, looking like she was trying to keep a straight face. "Don't," I said flatly as she opened her mouth.

Just then, Haillie floated in under the door. I groaned and rolled over in my bed, shutting my eyes and trying to ignore the ringing of my ears. "Not you," I growled.

From somewhere behind me, I heard an inane giggle, and then Iago repeating, "Not you." "Yeah, and the Sultana was all like, 'You're too skinny!' and he was all like tipping over the carpet!" Another giggle. I flipped over and sat up, even though it made my head want to split open. "You know? For somebody who looks like they just got dipped in pepto bismol, you're pretty annoying," I complained.

I heard a cough from behind me. Jala was sitting cross-legged on my covers, looking quite cross. "Could you just lay off of her for one second? She's been through a lot more than you'll ever go through, though I must admit, that show with the Sultana was quite intriguing." She was trying hard to keep a straight face, I could tell. A smart comeback was always hard to think of when Jala was around; it wasn't easy admitting that she was the first person that had ever caught me tonguetied.

At last, I coughed too and replied, "Yes, but that _show_ also made you turn green with envy." Jala's eyes widened. "Of all of the low, shallow excuses that you could make up!" I smiled charmingly at her and raised an eyebrow, tilting my head toward her slightly. "Admit it, darling. You can't resist me." Jala made a disgusted face at me and vanished back into her lamp. Well, that got rid of her fast.

Now, I had to deal with Haillie.

……………………….

Two hours later, it was time for me to attend to my royal duties. It had taken a toll on my limited abilities to get Haillie out of my chambers. My head was still banging, and my ears were ringing, and I kept having to lean against the wall. This I found preposterous, as I considered leaning on anything or anybody a weakness. It was unimaginable and unacceptable for myself to be doing it!

It was a relief as I walked into the cool, spacious throne room. However, I made the mistake of looking at the high-domed ceiling to thank Allah, which made my stomach clench. I forced it down, but instead ended up collapsing in a heap, with my red and black garments swimming around me, right in the middle of the marble floor, clutching my head. At last, I pressed it to the marble and felt the cold seep through my head. "_Ah, yes…_"

A titter. I peeked out of the folds of silk and marble at reality. Standing with his arms crossed was Razoul, at last having his chance to look down at me. "Eh, boss?" he asked uncertainly. The fool.

However, I felt a stabbing bruise to my dignity as I unwillingly pushed myself off of the floor and stared down at the smaller man, at last at my rightful place: above him. "Yes, Razoul?" I asked him stonily. Over the years as Grand Vizier and closest place to the throne, (even closer, after finding Jala!), I had learned to never let your inferiors bother you. "Er, um, nothing," Razoul muttered, and walked away. I smiled triumphantly.

Before sauntering up to the throne to my place, I complacently patted the small, elegant gold lamp in my black belt. In return, I got a small wisp of very hot green smoke that made my draw back my hand. Apparently, Jala wasn't in a mood to cooperate. Well, she had no choice: I had my wish ready for her tonight.

………………….

I collapsed onto the bed in my chambers, completely worn out.

Today had been host to a very large, extra long line of peasants. Apparently, Agrabah had never been needier. Sighing, I pulled out Jala's prison from my belt and set it on a desk. "Jala, come out," I said, tired. Jala materialized with her back to me, arms crossed. I glared at her braid. "Jala." "Yes?" she replied curtly. "What do you want me to do, apologize?" I snapped. "I'm the master and you're the genie here."

I heard an odd sound then, halfway between a sob and a sniffle, I could guess. My back stiffened and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. I might have almost become ruler of the world and could kill men with ease…there was no doubt, I had a blackened heart. However, there was one thing that I just could not witness. Crying.

Jala turned around. What looked like green puffs of smoke were coming from her painted eyes, which I supposed to be tears. "Yes, and that's what I'll ever be, right?" she yelled. "Your genie! Your slave! I'm worthless except to wait on your every whim! Do you _know_ how that feels, Jafar? I'll bet that you have no idea what it feels like to be enslaved to the one man that will never love you." I was shocked speechless. "But Jala," I said. "You _despise_ me. I thought we had an agreement that we'd be enemies."

The green genie turned on me in disbelief. "Honestly, Grand Vizier, you are really a little stupid." She gave a weak chuckle. "You haven't figured out that I love you?" With that, she shrank back into the lamp. With all thought of my first wish forgotten, I lay back in my bed and gazed at the ceiling, back at hating the world again.

Sunlight, burning hot, poked through my hooded eyelids, and I peeked them open, cursing the sun. Was it morning already? I had fallen asleep at four in the afternoon, something that did not ever happen in the history of an evil genius, especially not with their nemesis watching. Iago squawked and perched on my shoulder. "Wow, you got hit hard, didn't ya, boss?" he chirped smartly. I did nothing but stand up and glare slightly at him. Iago might be my best friend, but I wasn't in the mood for smart cracks.

Warily, I eyed the golden lamp sitting innocently on the table, almost expecting Jala to materialize with more of her sarcastic remarks. This morning, there would be no more of those, and I only then came to realize that I was only appreciating my only somewhat human friend once she was gone.

I sighed. "Iago, did you have any idea?" The parrot shrugged. "Course I did. Anybody with a heart would!" That just made me lapse into silence. Was that what I was then, a monster? A twisted person beyond reach with a blackened heart, no feelings at all to make room for my mad quest and desire for power? The image of evil, unreachable. It was all I had ever worked to be, yet, it was that person that I despised at that moment, once at I had experienced what it was to be human.

Then, suddenly, I knew what I had to do.

Inhumane was one thing that I might have been good at, but apologies were not. It was a shame that it was just what I had to do. A little voice in the back of my head, (or it could have been Iago), kept saying that I was throwing my evil career down the drain. Aladdin, Jasmine, and Genie would end up on top. I tried my best to ignore it as I stepped over to Jala's lamp and tapped it slightly.

"Jala? Are you in there?" I whispered. Completely silent and no reply. Well, I didn't blame her.

I took a deep breath and just let it all out. "I'm sorry." Silence. Wow, I really wasn't good at this. Maybe I had become more corrupted over the years than I realized. "I'm really not good at this," I admitted, feeling like a fool talking to a parrot and a lamp, (even if they were my best friends, which seemed very sad indeed). "But I'm sorry. I'll understand if you never forgive me, you'll be another addition to a long list of people who never have."

With that, I swept out of the room, and for the first time in my life, I felt the burn and sting of tears as they leaked out of the corner of my eyes.

**A/N: Showing the soft side of Jafar there. Sorry if I'm like pressing his chapters, I just love the evil characters! Next chapter will either be Sorrah or Sultana, because I REALLY need to play them out more.**


	9. Escape and Capture

**Disclaimer: I do not own Aladdin.**

**Credit goes to Halo.At.Heart for coming up with Haillie. She also owns a few of the plot ideas that make the story more interesting. Right now, I can't think of the specific ones but once I remember, I'll post it here or in the other chapters!**

**Chapter 9**

**Escape and Capture**

**(Sorrah)**

I was terrified.

It was one of Agrabah's extremely rare storms, and I was huddled under the questionable shelter of a palm frond. My rag clothes were wet, tattered, and smelly and I was soaked through from top to bottom. Shivering, I tried to stop my teeth from violently chattering and watched white sheets of rain fall from the sky and shaking bangs of thunder shake the skies. Clenching into a ball, I wished more than ever to be back inside of the palace.

About a week after my escape, it was clear that it was no going back or die. I was no more than a street rat like Aladdin now, the very person that I had scorned so much. Had I not been born a street rat? I thought miserably. Well, I was born one, and right then I felt certain to die one. At least, that's what the hunger pangs in my stomach were telling me. A flash of white-hot lightning streaked across the sky and vanished. Soon after came another boom of thunder.

Instead of focusing on those noises, I tried to pick out the individual prick of raindrops as they landed on my outreached palm. It was impossible, it felt as if somebody was turning a bucket of water on my hand without stopping. Sighing, I put my head inside of my lap and tried without success to sleep the storm away.

Suddenly, my back pressed against something hard and my head shot up. Slowly, my head swiveled around to stare at the familiar faded white adobe of the palace battlements. A moan escaped my lips. I had been lying under one of the tallest palm trees that lined the battlement walls. It was like asking for suicide.

Keen on getting out of some hot water, I edged cautiously away from the wall, only to shrink back against it again in terror, for coming down the street was a patrol of the royal guard! I recognized Razoul at the front, barking orders and his unibrow knit in frustration. My eyes widened, as they were heading directly my way. Obviously, the Sultana had decided to get her daughter's handmaiden back.

"You there!" Razoul roared over the rain. He was pointing at me, but I pretended not to notice. "I say, you!" he roared again. I was startled when I realized he was close enough to touch me, and he pulled me upright by the sleeve. "Have you seen a young girl hereabouts, maybe 'round 17 years old-" He froze and squinted one-eyed at me. "You ever been to the palace before, rat?"

Recovering my senses, I shook my head no. Razoul still looked puzzled as he let me go. I realized that I had been holding my breath and that Razoul had been holding most of my weight up in the air. He looked closer at my face. I shrunk back, because the guy had a bad case of dragon's breath.

Eyes widening, realization finally hit the fool. "Sorrah? Sorrah, is that you?" He grabbed my wrist and pulled me back over to the other guards. I was wallowing in my own despair, unaware now even of the pelting raindrops beating me relentlessly from above. I was doomed, and this was the last water that I would ever drink. I opened my mouth and allowed water to pour in even as Razoul pulled me toward where I knew the main gate was.

Jasmine would be so disappointed in me. Not even being careful enough in a storm to realize that I was sitting right outside of the palace was stupid of me. After she had risked her own neck to allow me to escape out into the real world, if only for a little while, meant more to me than anything I could have ever known. She was a real friend, and now I felt the great need to repay her before my execution.

Unless.

Unless the Sultana would believe that I truly had no idea about Aladdin's love for me, unless the whole thing had blown over already and Jasmine just really wanted her old handmaiden back. It was too much to hope for, but I clung to it nonetheless.

Inside, Razoul dropped me on the floor of the main entrance hall ungraciously. I picked myself up, panting and ringing water out of the bottom of my shirt. It was then that I finally dared to slowly peek up. There was the Sultana, sitting statue-like on her throne. But where was Jafar? I was surprised to see the area of the platform that the throne was on that Jafar usually occupied was empty. Good riddance.

Well, to concentrate on my own case, I threw myself to my knees and prayed for mercy. "Your Majesty, I am grateful-" "No need, Sorrah," said a flat, cold voice that I barely recognized as Jasmine's own mother's. I fell silent, shaking all over from both cold and unimaginable fear.

"You ran from the palace and from your rightful punishment. Therefore, you should be punished even further." I pursed my lips and refused to beg for my life. "However, you have been a great friend, companion, and servant to my daughter. You will live, but the next time…" Her voice trailed off in a deadly tone. I let out a breath, hoping that I wasn't only dreaming.

Razoul once again came forward and led me to Jasmine's chambers while inside, I danced a giddy dance with joy. I would live, I would see Jasmine again!

The door creaked open. Inside, Jasmine had her back to us, working on some papers no doubt. She turned around and her eyes widened. "Sorrah?" "Jasmine!" I ran and she ran, and we met in the middle of the room and hugged a bear hug that probably would have choked some people. "I'm so glad that you're safe!" Jasmine said, tears in her eyes. I smiled back at her, teary myself. Razoul coughed, embarrassed, and excused himself.

………………………….

Me and Jasmine went well into the night with me telling her what had happened, and Jasmine filling me in on what had happened with the two genies, and her wish. My eyes widened, as her story was much more interesting than my own, which mainly consisted of complaints. "You're not the real princess?" I exploded. Jasmine looked down at her feet, obviously ashamed. "But…" I stammered. "You're a great Princess! And if you aren't, then who's the real heir to the throne?"

Jasmine looked up and looked me straight in the eye.

"Sorrah, sit down on the bed, alright?" I did as I was bidden to do, expecting something horrifying to come out of Jasmine. Supposing Jafar was the heir to the throne. That would have been something that I wished never to know. However, I needn't have worried about that. Jasmine smiled at my guess and shook her head.

She opened her mouth. The moments seemed to tick by in slow motion.

Then…

"_You_, Sorrah. You are the heir to the throne."

**A/N: Please review, even though it was short. The next chapter will probably be longer, I just wanted to update this!**


	10. A Puzzle

**Disclaimer: I do not own Aladdin.**

**A/N: Coming up in the next few chapters especially are several plot ideas that Haillie helped me come up with. We sat on my bed for hours mulling over a solution to one of the biggest plot problems in history (ok so it was 15 minutes but for our brains it took very much thought). Still, it's not the perfect solution and a little Star-Warsy. What the problem was is at the end of the chapter, you'll see!**

**Chapter 10**

**A Puzzle**

**(Jafar)**

I sat in the darkest corner of the palace, leaning against the wall, (twice in a day, I was turning into a weakling), and _weeping._

"Dry your tears, dude," said a voice. I was too busy being preoccupied in my own thoughts to think it odd for somebody to tell me to dry my face, as if I were a little boy being told off.. "I'm not crying, there's just something in my eye," I mumbled while trying to wipe my face dry with my sleeve and still look dignified. Haillie's face came into focus. "Yeah, those things in your eye are called tears," she observed.

I was too tired out to protest and remind her who she was talking to when the hot pink djinn sat down next to me on the step and lapsed into silence, something that would have amazed me in a happier mood. Right now, I barely noticed her presence and couldn't have cared no matter what she did. Jala hated me, the only friend besides Iago that I had ever had. I hadn't fallen in love with her any more than I had fallen in love with Iago, but she had obviously with me, for what reason I could not comprehend.

"Huh, Jafarty. If you want Jala back, then you'd best take my advice," Haillie sniffed out of no where. I raised a wary eyebrow at her, stifling the onslaught of tears. "Jafarty? If you call me that again, I'll…" "You'll what, kill me?" scoffed Haillie. "Face it, there's nothing you can do to me anymore." I thought about that, regretting that I really couldn't.

"She's my sister. I know what she'll like if you give her something…" Haillie said slowly. I was suddenly all ears.

"What? What do I do?" I asked, too eager-schoolboy sounding for my taste. "Genies love to be given things, because they are constantly giving and the world never seems to offer a present back," Haillie explained. "Give her flowers, she'll love it!" I was incredulous. Somebody like _Jala _enjoying _flowers?_

A smile played across my lips. "You know what, Haillie? Flowers are too mild for this genie. I know just what to get her."

…………………

As I walked into my chambers, I was no longer wary of the golden lamp sitting on the dresser. I tapped on it lightly and whispered, "Jala? Are you home?"

A saucy voice replied immediately. "Of course I'm home, where did you think I was? Well, certainly not free!" Instantly, I regretted even speaking. I wanted to sink into the deepest, darkest hole there was in Agrabah and never come out. Then I could possibly be granted the hope to shrivel up and die. A little voice in the back of my head tormented me. "Look what this GENIE has done to you, Jafar! Where is the evil genius hiding?"

"I…I have a present for you," I said hesitantly. Instantly, a swivel of green smoke poured out of the lamp and into the air. Jala materialized, looking like she had been crying just like me too. "What." She sounded almost interested, though her eyes would never betray it. I managed to convince myself that I had imagined it.

From the recesses of my cloak, I brought forth a stick.

Jala's green orbs brightened immediately. Something golden swelled up in my chest that felt like sunlight. I was pretty sure that it was a new feeling to me, but it felt somehow vaguely familiar. Jala took the stick from my outstretched hands and hugged it. "A stick! Oh, Jafar…" "I thought you might like it," I said uncomfortably. "And Haillie helped," I added hastily on a second thought. Her eyes started to brim over again. The golden, bubbly feeling disappeared to be replaced by embarrassment.

I didn't have time for that, because Jala swooped in and hugged me in a choking embrace.

……………..

I opened my eyes to find Jala looking at me sadly.

The memories of yesterday filled my mind and I shot up from my bed, my cheeks instantly flooding with redness. "Er, good morning," I said, jittery. The voice in the back of my head was filled with revulsion for this new self. Jala gave me a shy smile. "Morning." Since when had Jala been shy? All of a sudden, I felt extremely, extremely awkward being there.

"I have my first wish for you," I finally said, trying to change the subject. Jala looked even slightly…disappointed? "Oh, finally!" she said cheerily. I could tell she had been hoping for me to say something else, but I had no experience with this kind of thing and let it drop. "I wish to know exactly what is going on with the royal line, all with Jasmine's wish messing it up and all." Jala sighed and waved her arms.

Stacks of books instantly appeared. My eyes widened. "Actually, I was preferring that you _told me_ about it." "Oh." Jala made all of the scrolls and books vanish with a smug smile on her face. "I'm just doing that to be nice, you know," she said sarcastically. "So, what do you want to know?"

"Everything."

Jala rolled her eyes. "You once admitted to knowing everything." I sighed. "A man has his own reasons for lying. Now tell me the story of the throneline!" Jala considered, then said slowly, "I think that you should get the others here to hear this also. It may solve many problems. I'll go and fetch them." Before I could protest, (twice in a week), she vanished, obviously going to fetch the others.

A few minutes later, she returned with Aladdin, Genie, and Haillie looking as usual but with Sorrah and Jasmine looking quite pale. "I'm next in line for the throne," croaked Sorrah. I crumpled into a chair. Aladdin seemed to have stopped breathing. Jala sighed. "I have a story that might be highly helpful in sorting this out, so don't have a heart attack yet, Sorrah, please," she said, meaning for it to be kind. Sorrah smiled weakly as Jala launched into her story.

………………

_Thousands of years ago, when Agrabah was still new, there lived a Sultan. He was not well loved by the people: greedy, selfish and uncaring. What did he care if an infant peasant boy died? What did it matter to him, surrounded by jewels and gloating on his velvet throne and the best court that any man could ask for? However, the joy of his life, the only part of him that still was humane and not consumed by greed, loved his wife the Sultana._

_The Sultana was lovely, beautiful like a porcelain doll. She had a kind heart and sympathetic nature. Why she had married the Sultan, nobody could say, but rumors flew around the palace. One day, she fell extremely ill. On her deathbed, she asked her trusted handmaiden to summon the Sultan. "Assassins are planning to kill you…" she whispered on her last her breath. "Take our twin daughters with you, and hide for your lives!" Then she slumped over, limp, and died._

_The Sultan, wild with despair, acted immediately on his love's death wish. He summoned the Grand Vizier, and gravely told him of the Sultana's wish. The Grand Vizier was to act as the Sultan, nobody was to know that they had two baby princess daughters. The Grand Vizier's last view of the Sultan was as he fled out of a side door of the palace, clutching the two bundles of fabric that were his daughters._

_They went to live in the hills as simple shepherds. The daughters grew up never knowing of their royal bloodline, the father tried his hardest to keep their family secret from them. The Grand Vizier had a son, and he became the princely heir to the throne, and gradually, the real Sultan and his daughters were forgotten by everybody save the Grand Vizier, who was still furiously loyal to his old Majesty._

_One day, the two daughters went out to pick wildflowers in the woods. They never returned. The shepherd was wild with grief, and he was alone in the world. He jumped over a cliff, and his bones were scattered by the wind. Still, nobody knew about them, living in a very remote countryside of Agrabah. They were completely forgotten once the good Grand Vizier decoy passed away, buried in dust. The Prince was made Sultan of Agrabah, and his throneline continued for the next three thousand years._

…………………

Jala paused and looked at Sorrah. "You are the direct blood descendant of the Grand Vizier, the decoy. Therefore, you have no real royal blood in you. Jasmine has even less right, as she was wished onto the throne. The Sultana is Sorrah's mother, not yours, Jasmine," she added in on a second thought. Sorrah looked immensely relieved. "So…you mean, that Sultan…_his_ descendants have full right to the throne, and I have no legal claim?" Jala nodded. Sorrah looked like she could sing.

I didn't know what was so great to be scooted off of your rightful throne. I would have loved to have been scooted _on_ to it, and now I suddenly realized that there was a chance that I was heir to the long-lost daughters, (nobody knew if they had died, didn't they?), and the throne would be mine. Acting on my idea, I turned to Jala, ignoring the tense look she gave me.

"Jala, does that mean that _I_ might be the rightful heir to the throne?" I asked, trying not to sound hopeful. Jasmine looked horrified at the very idea. So did everybody else in the room, for that matter, except for Haillie, who had become interested in a piece of lint hanging from the edge of my carpet and was crooning a lullaby to it.

Jala hesitated. I thought she just didn't want to hurt my feelings, (so naïve, so naïve…youth is wasted on the young), but she looked truly scared. "I…you see…" she cleared her throat rather nervously, I thought. "I know who those two daughters were, and who really IS the rightful heir to the throne," she said at last. "Who?" asked Aladdin, Jasmine, Sorrah, Genie, and I. "Hmmm, that's nice," said Haillie absently.

My green genie smiled slightly. "Ah, I don't know. Maybe I should wait until tomorrow morning." Aladdin gave her a look that said if she tried something remotely like that, he would throttle her. For once, I agreed with the street rat. "Stop playing your little games and get on with it!" I said impatiently. Jala glared at me. "You have the patience of a mouse, and the brain of one too," she snapped.

"You see, those two daughters…were me and Haillie," she said quietly. "Haillie was turned into a genie from an unknown source out in the woods when we were separated. She saved me from a pack of wolves by turning me into one too. Of course, after that, we were chained to our lamps and could no longer go back to our father. Through thousands of years, we have watched the wrong throneline rule Agrabah. We have no descendants, so that would mean that the oldest of the two of us would get the throne. And…Haillie's the older one."

My eyes bugged at her. This couldn't be happening. "The _looney_ is the heir to the throne? When I've fought and corrupted and wished my way toward it for all but the whole of my _life_?" I roared at her. Jala looked surprised, but nodded weakly nonetheless. Haillie the Crazy was heir to the throne. Said Genie raised her hands up into the air, hugged the piece of lint, and let out a long "yippee" and a "woot". "Who's good? Who's good? BOW DOWN TO HAILLIE ON ONE KNEE, ALL OF YOU!" she cried happily. I wanted to believe that this was all a bad dream for the first time in my life.

"But…that can't happen. Genies can't have children," I said, clinging to one last hope. Jala shrugged. "We're immortal. We don't need children." "But the throne has passed from mother to daughter, father to son for as long as Agrabah has been here!" Aladdin protested. "It wouldn't be right for Haillie to hog the throne for eternity! She's-" He cut himself off abruptly and looked at the floor, embarrassed. "What, you mean she's special?" Jala challenged. "Well, I say that Haillie's the best Sultana this land will ever have!" I could tell she was trying to convince herself of that too.

I opened my mouth to argue.

"Jala, be reasonable. Everybody in this room knows that Haillie can't rule." Jala looked outraged, so outraged that she nearly turned Haillie's shade of violent hot pink. "Oh yes, it's just like you to put her down, Jafar! You're…you're…you're _inhumane._ You're like a calculator with a twisted, stupid, dark heart!" Normally, I would have been quite proud to say that and instantly reply with a drawling comeback. Not today.

Her words pierced me through like daggers. I felt _hurt._ It was a feeling, like happiness, that I very rarely experienced and I didn't like one little bit. Jala was panting, still shooting a look hot as fire pokers at me, and the rest of the company sitting in my chambers were looking rather uncomfortable to be witnessing this.

"Nice of you to say," I forced myself to reply calmly to Jala's accusations. "Now, shall I remind you who the master is here, and who is the genie?" Jala turned so beet red at this that I was afraid for her safety. At that temperature, she could very well explode. "You…you're-IMPOSSIBLE!" she sputtered, turning an unattractive shade of puce. One part of me smiled slyly in contempt. The other half cringed back from the pain in her voice.

"Alright, so be it," said a voice. It seemed very far away, and it took me a very long time to realize that it was my own.

**A/N: The problem was how Haillie could possibly be in line for the throne if she was thousands of years old. Please review, I tried to make it longer and it is. I'm not sure about the quality though.**


	11. Mistakes

**Disclaimer: I do not own Aladdin.**

**A/N: The story won't be that long, guys, it might be over in as little as three chapters, though I hope it won't be. I'll try to add some twist to the plot so that I can elongate it! And I am SO sorry about not updating in an eternity. My cousins and relatives from China are over, and it's been really hectic. 9 people in the house…Apologies again that I forgot to say so in my last update, I really am sincerely sorry. I hope the quality of this chapter is alright so I can partly make it up to you!**

**Chapter 11**

**Mistakes**

**(Jala, Genie of the Lamp)**

I hate humans.

I see, you think I'm saying that because I'm mad at Jafar, but it's a general rule. I hate all humans because they will all eventually break your heart. Especially Grand Viziers, and especially especially the ones like Jafar. Curse the world that I was the genie chosen to take that lamp!

That was the state that I was in for several days, refusing to come out of my little golden lamp. Eventually, my anger faded and succumbed to boredom, but still I refused to come out. Jafar was going to get the silent treatment, and he'd be lucky if he ever heard my voice again. Of course, I knew why I was in this lamp. I was a genie, and genies are bound to lamps to serve their masters. I didn't want to be a genie.

Finally, after four days, I thought I was going to go insane. Boredom is a funny thing. It presses and presses and won't leave you alone. When I was sure that Jafar had left on some errand of his, (thankfully in too much of a hurry to take his trusty genie lamp with him), I floated out and took a deep breath of air. Ahhhhhh…I floated around the room and feasted my eyes on every single object that was not the rounded gold inside of my lamp.

Click.

I froze in the middle of my first venture in half a week. The lock on Jafar's door was being picked. I watched as in slow motion, the inside of the lock clicked open. I was too afraid even to make a mad dash back to my lamp. The wooden door swung open. I squeezed my eyes shut. Here was the end.

After five seconds, I popped one eye open cautiously. There stood Jasmine, Sorrah, Aladdin, Genie, and Haillie, looking rather confused at my absurd behavior. I flushed. "Err…hello." Laddie, (as I liked to call him in my head), raised a bushy eyebrow. "Where's your master?" "_Jafar_, his royal idiotness, is on an errand. If you came here to see him, then you're apparently wasting his time and your time," I snapped.

Laddie looked taken aback. "What's gotten into you, Jala?" "Gotten into me? Nothing's gotten into me. I think, in fact, that there's something wrong with you," I replied shortly, on the verge of shrinking back into my lamp. If only to escape these people that pestered me! It was even worse than the one conversation I had attempted with Iago, who had called me several names that I cannot repeat.

Jasmine smiled warmly at me and sat cross-legged on the unmade bed. "Jala, I know you're upset, but we're your friends an-" I cut her off. "Stop shrinking me! I don't want to talk to any of you right now!" A look of such hurt crossed the fake princesses' face that I instantly felt a sharp pang of regret, but there was no way that I would let her know that. Not in a thousand years.

Quietly and one by one, they left. Genie whispered something in my sister's ear as they went out. She giggled and did one of her elaborate hand motions. Was I even losing my only sister?

………………..

That night, as soon as Jafar came back, I shrank back into my lamp. "Jala, please! You're being completely Iago-like," he said. His voice sounded oddly like an oversized genie's from inside my lamp. There was a protesting, "Hey, I'll give you Iago-like!", and then there were no more comments from Jafar. I sighed quietly and curled up in a ball, wishing for the life of me that genies could sleep.

When morning came, I found that it was still no relief. Jafar didn't have anything scheduled, so he succumbed to trying to persuade me to come out of my lamp. At first, I blocked out his voice. Then, I ignored it. By mid-afternoon, I was so annoyed that I actually came out and screamed, "IT WAS YOUR IDEA THAT WE WERE GOING TO BE ENEMIES!"

The look of shock that I had created on his thin bearded face was priceless. If cameras had been invented in those days,that would have been a Kodak moment.

"Jala, I…" he whispered quietly. "YOU WHAT?" I roared. My heart was only half into the rant I was on, but if I let up now, it made me look like an idiot. That was something that was stored in for my master. Jafar looked up at me. "Never mind. I can see that you wouldn't understand if I told you." I was speechless as he walked slowly out of the room, at a loss of what to reply with.

That night, I had made up my mind. Inwardly, I'd finally realized that I wasn't actually mad at Jafar: I was mad at myself. I hated fighting in general, so I found nobody else at fault but myself for the current state of tension. So, when my master finally returned promptly at midnight thinking that I had already fallen asleep, (genies don't sleep), I popped out to surprise him. "How about I tell you a story?" I asked him.

Jafar looked startled. "A…a story?" "Yes, I made it up," I replied cheerily. "It's told by a princess, name of Maira, living in a magical kingdom called Ariar. I can be _your_ Sharazade, and I'll tell a little each night, and we'll be friendly another day." It was a joke, but he looked the closest thing to happy there was. And that night, I began the tale that I had never told anybody except for Haillie.

…………….

_The petal drifted out into the middle of the gently gurgling creek. Clear water tumbled off jagged rocks, and my red petal jumped and somersaulted to the beat of the running water, sticking to a rock here and there. The ripples it caused were like life, I reflected. One small thing causes a big difference._

_OK, I was thinking like a philosopher. That's the first sign that I'm desperate, because only desperate times cause me to think like a philosopher. Desperation could also be the only excuse that I would have thought up to be at this creek bed. At the dead of night with a full moon. Throwing rose petals at a creek. This was the first time that it had occurred to me how truly sad this seemed._

_"Ma? Are you out there?" I whispered softly. I might have been wallowing in my own despair, and this was not helping to make me feel any less stupid, because I didn't know what to expect as a reply to my plea: I was one of those people who had phobia of the unexpected. Other than a few last dead leaves rustling, my plea received no answer. The familiar plummet of disappointment in my stomach was sickening. It made me feel like an utter and complete idiot._

_"Your mother is dead," I whispered to myself._

_There. I had said it, the bare, painful truth. I had come here to Ma's place to escape from it and instead it was clearer than ever. It was a long time until the tears, warm and salty, started to stream their way down my cheeks. My mother's old place was all around me: if asked to, I could name where we had picnicked for my eighth birthday, where she had taught me to crochet, (though that was in vain), and a million other things. Slowly, I closed my eyes and curled up into a ball on the ground, letting the relief of sleep wash over my mind, relieving it from the pain of losing Ma._

_Suddenly, I awoke to colors of dawn lighting up the sky. Outside of the forest clearing, the vendors selling their wares called out in clear voices. Quietly, I made my way back toward our ranch. Papa would be missing me, and my friends might be waiting._

_Sure enough, as the huge ranch came into view, a girl came running toward me, her long yellow plait of hair flying out behind her. "Maira!" she called. "You missed breakfast." I sighed. "Corona, I never eat breakfast out here anyways." She smirked, curtsying. "Oh, I forgot. I'm supposed to act like a proper handmaiden in public." I laughed uncertainly. "Corona, you're not my handmaiden." "Exactly," she replied. Sometimes, I never got her jokes._

_"We're going back to the palace today," Corona remarked more seriously as our footfalls brought us closer to the ranch that we were vacationing in. The fact that she was trying to sound casual didn't escape me. I sighed. It was regrettable, leaving this place. It was where my mother had grown up as a girl. Without her, Papa had become a hard, distant man. The palace was even worse, full of stuffy politicians and hard-faced nobles who might as well have had their tongues stolen by the fat cat that prowled the palace grounds. Another sigh: sometimes, (well, most of the time actually), being a princess was quite boresom. I should explain. _

_In the Land of Ariar, where my friends, I, and family ruled, five joint kings ruled together at a time. Each must marry only one wife. The wife was permitted to have a maximum of three children, but it was the eldest who would always rule in their father or mother's place. The five current kings all had daughters, much to the disappointment of the commoners. This was what I despised, how girls were forgotten and boys were honored. Corona and I were only two of the five princesses, as you might have guessed. The other three were currently waiting outside of the ranch doors, sitting on wooden suitcases. They rose when Corona and I entered, curtsying stiffly but mockingly. This formal stuff was all pish-posh to us._

_"Are you ready to leave?" inquired Sheila formally. She was the smallest of us all, her large brown eyes shining with mischief and her long, pale brown hair framing her delicate china-doll like face. I smiled. "I'll go unwillingly." It was only a true statement. "Our" place was so full of freedom that it practically vibrated with it._

_The coach moving slowly down the street gave me time to think, exactly what I didn't want. All of the princesses were in one coach, the kings in a much larger, grander one, and the spouses and siblings in a lesser wooden one still: it was a direct representation of how court life distinguished your rank, severely and more noticeably than a commoner's would be exposed._

_Corona was in the middle, as usual, because she was "skinny as a rod" and "shot up like a weed", like the cooks loved to complain as they toiled to meet her growing appetite. I was on her right side, and another princess named Autumn with long, raven locks and chocolaty skin was on her other. On the ends of the coach seat were Sheila and Kiki, a dark girl with curly black hair cut at her shoulders. The rounded turrets of our palace gradually came into view on the blue horizon outside. I remembered Ma sketching it when I was still little._

_"Announcing His Royal Majesties and the Princesses of Ariar, jewels of this Kingdom's, return!" Bugles sounded, and the crier's voice was drowned out as we entered the palace walls. The familiar sights were too overwhelming. Ma had been alive the last time we were here. We had been out of the palace grounds for 2 months now._

_A coachman helped each of us down in turn, and then, I was running. The others flew behind me, our long dresses billowing out from the breeze. "Library!" I gasped. The grand double doors to the palace banged open to admit us. The warmer air of the palace hit me hard and people stared, but we kept running. Up a pair of spiraling, velvet-covered steps, through three corridors, turn left. The places where my feet touched were more familiar than the back of my own hand._

_At last, the entrance to the library loomed before me. Quietly, I pushed open the door. Corona, Kiki, Sheila, and Autumn followed me in, our long plaits swinging slightly behind us. Inhaling deeply, I took in the familiar smell of musty, old bound books and rich coffee. Automatically, my eyes tried to find Oggie._

_Agatha Pearl Aristadela Primp is the librarian at the palace, but we shortened her mouthful-of-a-name into just simple "Oggie". "Where is she?" wondered Kiki. I didn't have an answer. "Why don't we look at books while we wait?" I suggested. There was a small murmur of agreement as we went our own separate ways to look for books suited to our taste._

_I was leisurely browsing along the fantasy section when I saw it: a thick, red volume. Curious, I went for a closer look. It lay innocently on the table, the curly gold script on the cover winking in the light. It was in Ruin letters from the Old Age! I could not read it. Using the tips of my fingers, the pages flew as I skimmed through them. Dust filled the air. I sneezed. "Bless you!" called Autumn's voice. Startled, the volume abruptly snapped shut under my shaking hands._

………………….

"We won't argue tomorrow…" said Jafar's sleepy voice. I smiled. It was barely a smile, the tips of my lips barely curved. But it was a smile nonetheless. "Thank you," I said quietly. Too quietly: nobody was awake but myself to hear it, as the Grand Vizier had already fallen fast asleep. Laughing softly to myself, I also retired into my lamp. Things were turning out nicely.

**A/N: It was a sort-of filler chapter in my opinion, but the next chapter should be better. And full of more disturbing-things-in-a-good-way!**


	12. Wrinkled Tassles

**Disclaimer: I do not own Aladdin.**

**A/N: This chapter has more humor in it. Haillie owns part of the "magic carpet" scene. (Most of it, actually. All the good parts, anyways). Hope you enjoy!**

**Chapter 12**

**Wrinkled Tassels**

**("Laddie")**

Ever since the official note that Haillie was heir to the throne, things between me and Jasmine were less uncomfortable.

Yesterday, when me and Sorrah were discussing a few friendly matters, she even went as far as to smile and wave at me as she passed to go to the throne room, (the Sultana was still uninformed of all of these happenings). More and more, I realize that I'm not really in love with Sorrah: maybe I am, but thoroughly in an older-brotherly way. And more than that: I realize that I still love my Jasmine.

All in all, it's difficult to realize. She has more than enough reason never to take me back…I would understand her choices. Had I not also pretended to be royalty? Took on a false identity and wooed her, and then once I was truly unveiled, did she not wonder if my love was also as fake as my name? I was wrong to have been so quick to act on my impulsive anger. I knew that now.

As quick as that, Genie appeared. "Why the long face, Al?" he asked, twirling his spectacular handlebar mustache. An idea suddenly popped into my head. "What long face?" I asked, leaping up. "I'm going on a date with the love of my life." Leaving Genie to admire his own facial hair, I sped out of the room and toward the princess's wing.

……………………

Knock. Knock.

Slowly, Jasmine's door creaked open. Sorrah stood there, looking curiously at me. "Hi, Aladdin. Do you want to talk to Jasmine?" The expression on her face made it clear that she hoped that I had come to see Jasmine and not her. "Yes, please." Sorrah walked into the room and led me into an adjoined suite box to the one that I had just stepped into. Jasmine was lounging in an elaborate red chair and reading a large tome.

"Er, princess?" I asked timidly. She glanced up, not a care in the world. It was that kind of flippant attitude that really quaked my insides. I wished that Jasmine didn't have the full capability to master the poker face. "Yes?" "Um." I was at a true loss for words. Stuttering, hands sweating. Mind wiped blank.

"Owouljaliktaeadinnawitmehtonie?" I said. Jasmine's blank expression also stated that I had just messed up any chance to marry her. "I meant, How would you like to eat dinner with me tonight?" I said, a little slower this time but still rushed. Jasmine flushed. I thought she was about to show me out of her room with a stick, but instead, she smiled brightly, brighter than I had ever seen, and said, "Of course!"

I didn't return her smile, but I could _feel_ the smile inside of my stomach. "Good," I heard myself say. Was that really my voice, that squeaking sound? "I'll meet you on your terrace, alright?" Jasmine didn't reply, only winked at me and returned to the bookmarked page in her book. Sorrah led me back out and gently shut the door after me. "Have fun, Laddie!" she called after me.

If she hadn't closed the door before I could tickle her for calling me Laddie, (nobody but Genie had license to do that, he's different), Sorrah would have probably been laughing so loud that the entire harem would come and see what was the matter.

Back in my room, I was panicking again. Genie floated by, undisturbed by my nervous and endless pacing. "Relax, dude. Allie, she's gonna love ya!" said Genie, throwing open his arms. Poof. I felt the familiar sensation of magic and looked down to see myself in a tuxedo. "Um, I think I might prefer the Ali costume," I said twisting around to get a look at myself uncomfortably.

Genie sighed and clapped his hands. "If you must."

Promptly at sunset, I swaggered into the hallway, fully in costume complete with over-balancing hat. The feather wavered dangerously from side to side as I went into a dark side passageway. After walking for about five to ten minutes, I ended up on Jasmine's terrace…well, the door to it, actually. Nervously, I clutched the handrail and tried not to look down at my elf toeshoes.

And then, the princess swept in and all thought of myself was forgotten.

She was in her usual blue attire, but Sorrah had done her eyes in very dark kohl, and painted pale blue spots along the eye lines. Her hair had been left down, so she looked absolutely stunning, and her lips were painted a vibrant red. My knees wanted to give out, but I cleared my throat and forced myself to choke out, "You look lovely." It was a miracle that she understood me. "Thank you. Most of the credit goes to Sorrah."

Taking her arm, I pushed open the doors to the terrace. "Aladdin, how would it be if we skipped moonlit-dinner-scene and went on the carpet instead?" said Jasmine suddenly. I smiled. "Why not?" It was better than my idea anyways, in my opinion. I was about to help her step onto Carpet, when I realized that he wasn't there. Instead, there was a crudely made signpost out of wood: "CARPET CURRENTLY IN USE. ESTIMATED WAIT: FIVE MINUTES." "What the…" I started to say.

Then I saw them. Genie and Haillie. Genie was singing "A Whole New World" to her, and Haillie looked like she wanted to die. As they flew by slowly, she yelled to me through the slight wind, "Now, I have two options! I can jump off of this carpet, or I can push him off!" As they flew further away, I noticed Jala sitting on the battlement, munching on buttered popcorn. "Mind giving me some of that?" I called to her. "Sure, I'll send t back with Haillie next time they come 'round!" she yelled back.

Once they were nice and high over Agrabah, Haillie made her move. She shoved Genie right off of the carpet, and he fell. Boom. Déjà vu was starting to come back.

"Oh, wow, that looks fun!" exclaimed Haillie. Then she did a spectacular belly flop right off of the side of the carpet. Carpet flew back to us, looking battered. "Err…" said Jasmine, looking at the small pot of popcorn sitting on the carpet. "Is that moonlit dinner option still open?" "It most definitely is," I agreed.

Jala was watching as me and Jasmine descended back into her rooms. "Before you leave, would you mind sending back that popcorn?" she was yelling. I chuckled to myself as the doors closed, sealing out all noise from nighttime Agrabah.

Jasmine and I sat down to the most wonderfully cooked dinner Agrabah had to offer. Steam rose from the fancy dishes. My eyes widened at loaves of bread like the one that I had stolen on the streets. Jasmine saw my eye-line and laughed. "It is sort-of ironic, isn't it?"

Then, we settled down to some serious eating. I was ravenous, though I hadn't realized it before because of the butterflies flittering around in my stomach. They had been having a party, but now it was my turn. Jasmine watched me eat, chewing more slowly than I. Finally, she said something that had me thinking for a long time after. "Aladdin, who do you love?"

I choked on a piece of bread.

"To tell you the truth…I don't know," I finally answered. "What I wanted to say tonight is that I was and am sorry. It was wrong of me to get mad at you for something that you forgave me completely for." "Well, maybe not completely…" muttered Jasmine under her breath. "And I don't think I love Sorrah." Her head shot up. "You don't?" "No, how can I, when my heart belongs to another?" I asked her helplessly.

"Who?" Jasmine asked, her eyes narrowed at me. "Do I know her, Aladdin?"

"Well, of course you do. I love you, Jasmine."

**A/N: Please review!**


	13. A Minor Difficulty

**A/N: I'm sorry that I'm updating so slowly, but my cousins are here for a while, and it's their first time in America for a really long time, (first time for my youngest cousin). After they leave, I won't see them again for at least two years, so please excuse me. After they leave, updates should quicken up. I should put out a separate note that disturbedavocado, (Haillie), is helping me out a lot with the plot of this story. From here on, she owns about half of the story, and I'm just giving credit where credit is due. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Aladdin. Haillie owns most of the plot from here on, but I'm writing it. **

**Chapter 13**

**A Minor Difficulty**

**(Jafar)**

I wasn't in a good mood.

When I'm not in a good mood, you don't bother me. You don't try and test my limits, because people who have tried this have been heard to have vanished mysteriously, or never been seen again, and so on. My genie wasn't listening to her master, (me), and I had just found out that the street rat, (I was calling him that by habit sometimes), and his Princess Jasmine were in love once again.

Pah, love. It was a trivial thing compared to the important things in life. Human being's nature was to trick, deceive, and take what they had to in an everybody-for-themselves world. I had learned that the hard way, once my mother left.

You see, this presented a solution and a problem to me. If the lunatic were on the throne, I could probably most easily trick myself onto the throne on the day of her coronation. Now, if Aladdin and Jasmine were in love once again, then they could very easily win the case as successors to the throne, as Jasmine's line had been ruling as far as the oldest man could remember. They wouldn't be as easily taken care of.

The past few days had put me back on the track of trying to seize the throne. Seizing the throne meant seizing this chance, the best one that I would ever get, to seal my place as the Grand Vizier until the day of Jasmine's coronation. If there ever was one. In a hypothetical case, if the heir to the throne happened to have a little…accident…before that day should come, why, the Grand Vizier would become Sultan.

And the Grand Vizier in this very hypothetical case would have all power to rule over Agra-his kingdom, and all of his descendants would then take over as the royal blood line.

Speaking hypothetically, of course.

…………………………..

Jala had cooled down somewhat from her anger fever.

We were on speaking terms again, which was good if I wanted any more wishes from her. Yes, I was still all-too aware that she would lapse into insanity like that lunatic-of-a-sister she had if I didn't wish soon. But I was too busy planning my events, events that didn't wait for my thoughts. I could directly wish my way onto the throne, but look where that got Jasmine.

And yet, as the days went by, I found myself dawdling. There was none of the fervor that had seized me the first time I had tried this. Long nights over forged documents, long nights tossing and turning as I dreamed of ways to assassinate the princess, and somewhere deep, deep inside of the little innocence in my soul, a miniscule twinge of guilt; regret, even.

Was this not what I wanted? I constantly questioned myself. It certainly was what I had worked toward my entire life. My soul was torn, like I was standing on the tip of a rapier. On one side lay the angels, and the other, the devils of my soul. It was a battle of wills with only one will, a battle that raged through my mind, my heart, and ate at my conscience. It was almost as bad as being ill physically.

Naturally, the people who watched me assumed I was going insane. The Sultana had to call me several times when I was standing right at the arm of the throne chair before I answered in a hoarse whisper. Even Jala, who was still relatively cold with me, showed her concern. Her features were drawn when she floated out of the lamp, and she didn't speak with me anymore. The lack of conversation made it all the worse.

I could only hope that nobody knew the true cause of my discomfort, as that would prove fatal to all of the alliances that I had built in the past times.

………………………..

At night, Jala never told me her stories anymore. She seemed to understand that they would not help me anymore.

If I was unsure about how much others knew about my plans, then I was sure about what Jala thought: she had no idea what my intentions were. Murder. Trickery. Extreme unlawful acts. All three she would never approve of. Secretly, I was glad that genies had not been granted the power of mind-reading by Allah.

Oh, there was the possibility that Haillie would _not_ be butted off by Aladdin and Jasmine, I knew that. This hopeful possibility was considered by my brain in every angle, in the hopes that I would not have to murder, and deeply betray, the only people I had ever called friends in my quest for power. And yet, there was a voice inside me, a sureness, that told myself that Haillie had no way of staying on the throne if Jasmine was heir.

She was a genie, and immortal. Unless she served terms, (and that had happened before), she was not going to become Sultana. Besides, I knew very clearly what the lunatic's thoughts were about being a ruler: she was horrified. Haillie had no intentions to become Sultana in her immortal life. But Jasmine did.

And if my heart did not betray me, then I did too.

The days blended together. I took to alcohol to quell my thoughts that came in streams from every sound that I heard. Even in my dizzy state with half-consciousness, double-sight, and a migraine of migraines, there was still the faintest whisper in the back of my mind. _Murder. Trickery…_

When the courtiers avoided my eye, and Razoul stopped obeying my orders, I knew what they were thinking. _Jafar's finally cracked._ All this time, I had gleefully denied this possibility, sure that they were gossipers, liars, assumers. I was not going insane, soon they would all be under my power.

But as time wore by and no more plans were laid each night after Jala had gone inside her lamp, I began to ponder. What if I was insane? Did insane people that were eventually locked in the prison cells and bound with ropes feel this way as they entered the fanatical stage? Nobody spoke to me, and so I did not test my ability to speak.

Taking over the world is a harder thing to do when you get attached to the people you need to kill.

**A/N: There isn't any dialogue in this chapter, because as you can see, Jafar is too busy in his own little thinking bubble to do any talking.**


	14. Persuasions and Rare Wishes

**Disclaimer: I do not own Aladdin. From here on, half of the story credit goes to DisturbedGuacomole at ALL times.**

**A/N: I'm trying to update faster, I really am!**

**Chapter 14**

**Persuasions and Rare Wishes**

**(Laddie)**

Something wasn't right.

I was the first to sense it. The very atmosphere inside the castle was disturbed, humid. Somehow, it was different. Jasmine felt it too, I could tell by the constant twitching of her cute nose. "Something's up," we finally said at the same moment that afternoon. The feeling of foreboding was growing. I tensed myself for something out of the ordinary, anything at all.

Our wanders through the castle brought us to Jafar's room. I shrugged, figuring that we should probably go in. Jala must have been lonely, sitting in her lamp all day and what with the limited conversations she and the Grand Vizier had these days. I pushed open the door, greeted by the smell of mothballs. Jafar wasn't there, but his genie was, so me and Jasmine sat down on the rug.

"Oh, it's you," said Jala as she floated out of the lamp. Her voice was a little too cheery, and it made her seem even more glum.

"Jala, is everything alright?" asked Jasmine, looking worried. "Of course! Everything's perfectly fine," said Jala, too quickly. She gave what I thought was a disdainful sniff. "Except for the fact that this room hasn't been cleaned in half a decade, everything's just hunky-dory." I shifted uncomfortably on the floor. "Something's not right. Have you been keeping a close eye on Jafar lately?" I asked, uneasy.

The green jinn looked surprised. "Well, I kind-of live with him." "Yes, but is he always doing his duty, nothing out of the ordinary?" emphasized Jasmine. Jala looked perplexed. Then her face cleared. "Oh, you think he's trying to take over Agrabah again, do you? You really don't trust him! Well, if you don't trust him, then you don't trust me, and you're wasting your time!" With that, she melted back into her lamp.

Jasmine sighed and stood. "A lot of good that did." I got up too. "Jafar's up to something." "I know, I feel it too. But there's no proof at all. It might just be that we don't trust him like everybody else chose to, and are slower to forgive wrongs." I shook my head stubbornly. "It's not that. C'mon, Jasmine. Let's go find the genies and Sorrah."

…………………

"Alright. So, you want us to believe that Jafar's gone back to being all 'muahahahahaha', and he's going to betray us all in a matter of days," said Genie a few minutes later, lazily waving his blue arms in the air. I nodded earnestly. "Well, when you put it that way…" said Jasmine slowly. I glared at her. I had long nursed a grudge against Jafar for trying to marry her, and I wasn't going to lose the prospect that I now had a new reason to hate him.

"Aladdin, we're perfectly aware that you've nursed a grudge against him for a long time, so maybe this is just your imagination," said Sorrah skeptically. Alright, so maybe my grudge wasn't a secret anymore.

Haillie had a vacant expression on her face, like she always did. Her pale pink eyes gazed wistfully at the high domed ceiling of my room. Jala had not said anything at all, only floated above her lamp with her arms stubbornly crossed, refusing to say a word against or for her master. I could understand what she must have been thinking: longing to kill Jafar, and yet also to take his side.

I sighed. "Well, don't bother to grovel when I tell you, 'I told you so'."

"Maybe I won't grovel for that, but a poncho would be nice," admitted Genie. I sighed again. Jasmine looked hopelessly small as she sat cross-legged on the ground, giving a look to the genies and her handmaiden that I couldn't read. Something in her brown eyes was different. I didn't think she was used to her ideas being rejected. (I was.) Genie and Jala stayed to talk as Haillie and Sorrah followed me and Jasmine out to her quarters.

In her room, Sorrah was ordered away almost immediately. She scampered into her adjoined quarters in the next room. I heard the sound of clinking, and guessed she was probably preparing tea for us. "Jasmine?" she called, handing her a silver comb. Jasmine took it with a soft thank you, and pulled it slowly through her long, black hair. "Here, let me do it," I said gently, and took it from her.

"Aladdin, I don't want to face Jafar again," she said quietly, breaking the sound of the silver comb swooshing through her tresses. I pursed my lips and didn't say anything. I didn't want to deal with an evil Jafar again either. It was much easier to believe that he had turned good and banished his old ways. And yet, the nagging feeling at the tip of my heart told me that was too much to hope for. Yet.

She didn't expect a reply from me, though I knew she wanted one. Instead, I tied her hair up for her, and she turned around to look at me, her head cocked to the side like she used to do when we were alone and she could relax from the fake mask of royal princess. "I have an idea," she said briskly. It was quiet, enough so that Sorrah could not here, and I didn't like it when she used that tone of voice.

"Jasmine…" I said uncertainly as she bounced off of the bed, her bare feet pacing busily back and forth on her carpet.

She muttered quickly under her breath. "…not sure if it'll work…long time…consent…" I tried to make sense of it all, probably wearing the expression of somebody that had just been clubbed over the head by their best friend. When Jasmine went into these stages, the only solution was to watch and wait until she was willing to give you a brief explanation. I had learned this the hard way.

"Haillie!" she finally called, emerging from her reverie. For a full long, five minutes, nothing happened. Then, just as I was about to think Haillie had died, she came out of her lamp, looking dazed and not really sure where she was. With a frightening jolt in my stomach, I realized that her condition was getting worse by the day. Jasmine seemed to realize it too, for she faltered.

"I need to talk to you. What do you think about Jafar? Really?" Haillie had a slow, goofy smile spread across her face. "You could always make a wish." Her voice was persuasive. I could see through her, knowing that for her own selfish reasons, she desperately wanted to grant anything, anything at all that Jasmine threw at her. It would give back her sanity, for one, and if it didn't, Haillie no longer had anything to lose.

Jasmine sighed. "I thought I might try that." Haillie's faced brightened up. She folded her arms in the way that Genie used to, and smiled a toothy smile. "Wish away! Ommmm…" Even this display seemed more sane than her usual remarks.

The Princess gulped, and took a visible deep breath. She seemed to think about her wish carefully. What could she wish for that could help us, and hopefully get rid of Jafar without killing him? She also knew very well that making a wish was using up another one of the precious wishes left for us to use. Jala had two left, and so did Haillie. They were precious things, considering that Genie no longer could grant wishes to me.

Finally, she seemed to make her decision. I tensed up, knowing that the words that left her mouth next would determine many important things to come. My body was frozen in place. I lacked the ability to move a single muscle as Jasmine's lips parted…and her wish flew out of them.

"I wish for Jafar to be sent far, far away. So far away that he can never return to Agrabah."

Gladly, her jinn consented and clapped her hands, and Jafar was gone from Agrabah forever.

**A/N: So what do you think? Drop a review!**


	15. A Whole New World

**Disclaimer: I don't own Aladdin. Halo owns half of the story.**

**A/N: The last chapter ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, in my opinion. This is one of the funnier chapters that I had partial credit of the plot in, so here it goes!**

**Chapter 15**

**A Whole New World**

**(Jafar)**

At the time, I had no idea what had happened.

One minute, I was at the Sultana's side, standing on the throne's platform and helping Her Royal Majesty to go through papers about a certain peasant revolt near Agrabah that might endanger the people. The next, it was dark, musty, and uncomfortable.

I had no idea where I was, and naturally thought that I was going insane. All I knew was that I was in a small, cramped space that smelled bad and was made of something hard but bendable and was extremely dark. My neck was bent over my knees, and my hands pinned behind me. There was a fiery ache in my shoulders and backbone already. But the moment that I figured out where I was…well, I wished that I hadn't.

I was in a cardboard crate, being shipped over some large body of water on a barge, (I presumed that it was the ocean). And after that first despairing realization swept over me like cold water, I realized that I had also found one of my greater weaknesses while I was at it.

I got seasick.

…………………

Several hours, or it could have been days, later, I realized that I had a roommate. The box was very low in height, only two and a half feet, but it was about six feet long, so I could stretch a little bit once my arms were properly unpinned. I felt sick and depressed, loathed the sea, and cursed the being that had done this to me, though I still had no idea how I had come to be in here.

Also, I had discovered that I had a roommate: a monkey, to be exact. He had wide, black eyes full of mischief, and was also seasick like myself. Unfortunately, somebody had left two pills of a medicine called _Dramamine_ in the corner of our crate. Two pills. The monkey had eaten one, which stopped him throwing up and trying to tickle me as his victim, because the side effects of the medicine caused him to go to sleep.

I, amazed at this sudden miracle, immediately took the other pill. Since there was no water, I chewed it. That was one of the grander mistakes that I had made in my life, because the pill's manufacturers obviously had no creativity when it came to artificial flavoring: the pill tasted remarkably like toilet paper.

Regardless to its loathsome taste, however, it did its job well enough. After fifteen minutes of choking spasms, my head hung limp on my shoulder in the corner of the crate, unable to keep my eyes open. The soft snoring sounds of my roommate lulled me asleep. The sea continued its violent wrestling against the sides of the barge, and my stomach churned accordingly.

My dreams were of the ocean: deep, blue, evil. Forever going up and down, up and down…

………………….

When I awoke, there was something noticeably different about my confinement. There was _light_. I was so grateful that I knelt as well as I could in the small space and kissed the ground. The wind had battered the cardboard crate so that the lock had come partially off, and let in a miniscule ray of sunshine: now I could tell time.

By then, I was too sick to think of anything but staying conscious. No more revenge, no more cursing my jailers, no more room for anything but to bemoan my fate and…it pained me to admit that I felt a slight twinge of fear at both the thought of not landing soon and landing. Once the barge touched land, what would become of me? The monkey was no doubt a new attraction for a zoo, but what of me?

For only the second time in my life, I felt utterly and completely helpless, lost. I was being shipped across the ocean in a cardboard box with a monkey for a roommate, I was seasick, and I had currently no way to kill the creators of Dramamine.

Oh, woe was I!

………………….

By the seventh day in the crate, I found myself fervently wishing for my room back in the palace, for Iago and Jala, and even for the street rat and his friends. I vowed that I would spare them when I took over Agrabah and they would be highly ranking, if only there was a force on the earth that could save me from this…this…this living nightmare that I could never have dreamed.

I feared for my sanity, though I had little enough of that left even when I had not left Agrabah yet. When my feet next touched land, I swore to myself that I would kiss the land fifty times, forgive any wrongs the monkey had ever done to me, (one of his greater wrongs included pooing onto the hem of my robe), and beg forgiveness from Jala and the others.

If I ever made it back to Agrabah.

After the eighth day, I stopped trying to keep track of time. More Dramamine pills were handed in, which I ate. The new flavors included nail polish, rum, (my favorite flavor), and artificial cherry. I slept in the day from the effects of the Dramamine, and wailed so loudly at night from my nightmares that even the monkey got annoyed and chattered and pinched my arms.

At last, after what seemed like a torturous eternity, I heard the loveliest sound in the world: a horn, announcing that land was in sight.

Eagerly, I tried in vain to peer out of the crack in the side of the crate, but I could see nothing but a tad of dawn sunlight. In desperate happiness, I nearly strangled the monkey, (which I had secretly named Jack) in my disastrous attempt to hug him. Then, I waited like an angel, if not patiently, in the corner of my crate, for the barge to reach the holy sanctuary named "land".

………………..

At long last, the barge was being unloaded. Voices outside chattered in a language that I didn't recognize with smooth words and lots of clicking. At last, my box was unlatched, and in peered a very surprised young boy's face. His skin was very pale, with quite a sprinkling of freckles. "_Lookey what I've got here!_" he said to another man. I didn't understand what he had said. The strange words were new.

The monkey instantly leaped out. I dove out of the crate before anybody could make a move, and ran up the sandy beach. As soon as I had reached a sheltered hole on the sand, I kissed the ground fifty times, and sang a long song about my happiness. Then, worry about where I was dawned on me. Slowly, cautiously, I crawled out of the hole, my torn robes dragging sand.

I turned around. I was looking a large, green sign in the face. Oh, so the language the strange men had been speaking was English. I had studied enough to know how to read and write it quite fluently, but my accent in speaking was atrocious. I was able to interpret what the sign said, in large white letters against the green background:

"WELCOME TO IRVINE"

**A/N: Lol, my take on Jafar's little journey. Irvine is a little town on the southern coast of California.**


	16. A Hole in the Soul

**Disclaimer: You know the drill by now.**

**A/N: Guys, please review! I mean, my cousins are away again and I'm updating quite quickly. So is it so hard to drop me a pleasant surprise? Even if you didn't like it, tell me what's wrong with it, alright?**

**Jala has been a little cranky lately, but she does has all reason to be, what with Jafar's atrocious attitude toward her! Don't worry, she'll start acting quite normally again soon. Thanks for the tip-off, though!**

**Chapter 16**

**A Hole in the Soul**

**(Jala)**

"YOU WHAT?"

I had just calmed down and was planning to apologize to Jafar that night, and then Haillie told me that she had granted a wish to Jasmine. I was most likely never going to see Jafar again, and hang my neck in the deal too, because I couldn't follow him and he could no longer make more wishes. Haillie was quite sane now, thanks to the wish. Soon, I would be the one lapsing into insanity.

Of course, I was happy with my sister for her newly found sanity, but I was unbelievably incredulous for the wish she had granted to Jasmine. She really had no choice, but as I could not vent my anger on Jasmine yet, poor Haillie was the object of my ranting.

Haillie sighed. She was still quite strange, but at least now she talked sensibly for longer than five minutes a year. Don't get me wrong, I had always loved my sister, but I loved the sane version of her considerably more, as it at least knew who I was at _all_ times. Now, my pink sister rolled her eyes at the ceiling and stuck out her tongue. "Haillie, don't do that." "Why?" "It's annoying." "Oh, be quiet. You're only jealous because you can't do it."

I shook my head. I suppose that I will always be the sensible one. "By the way. One thing that I'm curious about: how _did_ you turn into a genie? Pray tell me before I go to strangle Jasmine," I said conversationally. Haillie looked at me oddly. "Out of all stories, that's the one that you want me to tell you?" "Yes. I've waited this long, haven't I?" She shrugged, pretending to be casual about the whole matter.

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt. Genie's the one that turned me into a jinn." I widened my eyes unwillingly. "_Genie?_" "Yes, who else?" "Genie. ALADDIN'S Genie? The blue dude? The one that we know?" "Yes, how many genies do we know?" she replied impatiently, very matter-of-fact. "Well, we know several. There was Fran-" "Oh, never mind. Do you want the story or not?" retorted my sister. I abruptly fell silent.

Haillie smiled toothily. "Alright, that's better. Now, when we were human, Genie used to belong to me. I never told anybody, not even you, that I had him. When we were separated in the woods, Genie found me when I was lost. The same pack of wolves that attacked you, ironically, also attacked me. Rather, I sent them after you," she admitted sheepishly. "What?" I gasped. "Well, you see, I really didn't want to be jinn without you," she admitted guiltily.

At another time, I would have been extremely angry and hurt. My own sister had tried to kill me! But I was grateful for it, because if she hadn't, we wouldn't be talking at this moment. "Go on," I said patiently. Haillie looked surprised at my reaction, but obliged. "Well, Genie saved me like I did to you, and turned me into a jinn like him. We used to be good friends with him, when we were both new to the jinn life. Don't you remember?"

Now, I did. I realized why Genie had seemed to familiar when I knew almost for certain that I had never met him before. When me and Haillie were lost and sad, Genie had been our best friend for a long time, until we each went our separate ways. They were old, rusting memories from centuries ago, but I still remembered. A puff of green smoke wafted down my cheek.

Haillie rolled her eyes. "Let's not get teary now. I think that you're due to shoot Jasmine." I smiled weakly. "Well, you were a good sister, I suppose, because I'm out to kill the princess." "Literally, I hope. She still owes me for delaying her wish that long," I heard Haillie mutter as I drifted out of the room.

………………

"Jasmine?" I said as sweetly as I could, knocking on her door. Sorrah opened it, looking slightly apprehensive on seeing that it was me. "Oh, hello Jala. Jasmine's inside." It didn't escape my notice that she didn't ask me to come in, but I did so anyways. The rooms were dark and seemed oppressive, as all of the window blinds were drawn. "She's reading," Sorrah whispered, pointing to Jasmine's private quarters.

I nodded my thanks, and my lamp clanked noisily on the carpet, though muffled, after me as I nervously proceeded toward the door. I pushed it open, and it creaked on un-oiled hinges. Jasmine was curled up on her bed, reading a book. However, her eyes did not move, and her thin, pretty features were drawn with worry. "She better be worried," I thought grimly, advancing.

She looked up with a start and slammed her volume shut. "Jala!" she said sweetly. It didn't fool me: her eyes were not cheerful, but even grimmer than my own. I sat on the bed. "Alright, I'm going to get straight to the point." Jasmine looked terrified by now. "Where's my master, and what have you done to him?" Jasmine coughed. "Do you really think we would harm Jafar in any way?" I raised an eyebrow at her. "Point taken."

Jasmine shifted her position on the bed slightly to look me straight in the face.

"Jafar was sent far, far away by Haillie's wish. To where exactly, I'm not sure, but Haillie says that he is across the ocean in America." I gulped, and my eyes widened. There was no possible way that I could follow him to America. Americans were not very magical people. They thought that mermaids and genies and such were merely myths: I would be a monster there.

I collapsed onto Jasmine's unmade sheets. "Bring him back," I whispered in a deadly voice. Jasmine shook her head helplessly at me. "I can't. You know as well as I that Haillie's last wish for me is very important." I pretended to not have heard her. "Bring. Jafar. Back." Jasmine shook her head again, and did not reply. "Use Haillie's last wish! Jasmine, I'm going to die if you don't bring him back!" I wailed desperately.

It was not like me to be like this. In the past few weeks, I had been oddly disoriented. I didn't mean my heart would break if I never saw Jafar again, that was still too sappy for a jinn of my type. I meant that I would literally lapse into lunatics, like Haillie had, if my last two wishes were not spent. Of course, I could take another person as my master, but that would just make my condition worse.

Wordlessly, I glared at Jasmine as she read for the rest of the afternoon. Jasmine did not get a word done out of her book, which satisfied me more than necessary.

That night, I went back to Jafar's rooms to sleep in my little gold lamp, as I had become accustomed to these past few weeks. Haillie was there, sitting on the bed as if waiting for me. In her pink eyes, I read what I knew was understanding for my obvious distress. Haillie had been the only one who was always on the exact same page as I was. I was glad that nothing had changed that.

"I know how you feel, Jala. Too much," she sighed. Then she began speaking with one of her imaginary comrades, just like the Haillie I had nursed in the past seventeen years. I smiled at the touch of familiarity, exactly what I needed when all my thoughts were on getting Jafar back. A sudden idea came to me.

"Haillie, could you…" "No," was the flat reply. "But, please! You could go after him! I could not, your powers are greater than mine, and I am bound to Agrabah and my lamp. I can't even follow my own master without his consent, which he has not given me. But Jasmine could let you go after him and bring him back!" I cried. Haillie glared silently at the wall. "He's a threat to Agrabah." "Haillie, I love him!"

"That's only one more reason to not bring him back," she replied softly.

I shrunk back into my lamp, angry at the world, Haillie, Jasmine, but most of all, myself.

**A/N: Again, please review. The next chapter should be filled with action, so check for it often!**


	17. Confession

**Disclaimer: I really don't want to write it out anymore.**

**A/N: I'm taking advantage of my free time to rapidly add chapters, and also because inspiration has hit home, (thank you, Haillie). This chapter is a return to Sorrah, who I have rather happily neglected for quite some time. Sorry, if there is anybody who especially likes Sorrah. She's a nice girl, but I don't really like her for some odd reason. In any case, this chapter was a bit necessary to be done in her point of view anyways. The next should be in the Sultana's.**

**Chapter 17**

**Confession**

**(Sorrah)**

Jasmine was distressed.

After Jala had left, she closed her door and locked it so that I couldn't come in, and went to bed. I'm still not under the impression that she got very much rest that night, but there was nothing I could do for her anymore. Instead, I tried to get myself a good night's sleep, considering the day's events.

Somehow, I made it through the night and woke with my eyelids half open to a river of molten sunshine pouring through my window. Happily, I got up and began to dress. As I sifted through my belongings for suitable clothing, I dragged a sandalwood comb through my long, black hair. Unconsciously, I found myself humming an old lullaby that my mother used to sing to me when I was a babe.

When I turned around, I stopped the music abruptly, because Jasmine was standing in the doorway with her hair down, with a most peculiar expression on her face. "Please, sing that again." So, I continued the song, uncomfortably aware of her stare on the back of my neck as I got ready. "Er, would you like some tea?" I stammered. Jasmine's features softened. "No, that's alright, Sorrah. Pray tell me, where did you hear that song?"

"It was a lullaby that my mother used to sing to me, before I came to the palace," I admitted. "Does it please you?" Jasmine smiled. "It's a beautiful piece. I believe that it's called 'The Crying Nightingale', and my mother used to sing it to me." I started. The Sultana, singing a lullaby? The idea was so outrageous that I wanted to giggle, but did not. After all, she was Jasmine's mother, and Jasmine was quite kind-hearted.

She smiled wistfully. "You can have the day off. Enjoy yourself, have fun, it'll do you good. I missed that song. Thank you, Sorrah." I cocked my head at her, and grabbing my slippers, I thanked her and slipped out of the chambers, free to enjoy myself as I might.

………………

I hadn't gone far when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around with a start, to find Aladdin looking at me with the oddest expression on his face. I had never seen him wear it before, and really couldn't identify what it was depicting. "Sorrah? Would you like to go on a carpet ride with me tonight? We need to talk." The blood drained from my face. Jasmine would kill me if I accepted, (and though I knew she really wouldn't, I couldn't hurt her feelings).

Instead, I nodded. "Alright. Meet me at the terrace of Jasmine's rooms. I'll see you then," he said briefly. The sound of his feet pattering down the hallway drifted out of my earshot and then I ran as fast and hard as I could in the opposite direction.

When I got back to our rooms, I instantly regretted it, for all that was left for me to do that day was to worry and fret, all the way until I must go with Aladdin on the magic carpet, which could only lead to something bad, considering that he still liked me. (That was what I thought at the time, having still no knowledge of his renewed love with Jasmine, though I would have rejoiced at the idea).

……………………………….

That night, I dragged my feet, which made echoing noises in the empty, grand hallways. Slowly and with a feeling that my heart was going to beat right out of my chest, I pushed open the door to Jasmine's terrace. The doors swung open as if by their own will with an ominous creak. I was greeted by the whoosh of fresh, cold night air, the image of an endless ebony sky studded with diamonds of stars, and the whole of Agrabah.

And, standing sheepishly and looking jittery next to the magic carpet, who looked rather eager to fly again, was Aladdin. He was wearing that ridiculous Ali hat, (if I may so), and refused to meet my eyes. "Well, shall we?" I asked. My voice sounded hoarse, sharp, and rather brisk. I sat down, cross-legged, in the middle of the carpet's purple weaving, squeezed my eyes shut tight, and prepared to die.

I had never flown before, so when I opened my eyes, I couldn't help giving out a gasp of wonder. The sky seemed like an endless dome of black silk, studded with millions of tiny, precious gems. Below were the clay buildings, some tall, some small, and a few people still wandering the streets. The night air whisked past my face like the wind was embracing me. "How do you like it?" Aladdin asked softly? I was speechless, at a loss for words.

"You see, Sorrah, I took you out here so that I might tell you something in private tonight." I gulped. Here it was. My friendship with Jasmine was about to go down the drain. "I…I realized that I don't actually love you, if you'll pardon me saying it. Jasmine's the only and true love of my life, and it would cost me my heart to ever lose her." I made a choking sound, too giddy to say a word.

Apparently, he mistook it for sadness, because he patted my shoulder and said, "I'm sorry." "Don't be!" I finally exclaimed. "This is the happiest moment of my life!" "It is?" he asked in return, looking rather confused. I laughed openly to the night. "Of course! You and my best friend are in love, and I'm not going to lose my friendship with either of you. What more could I ask?"

It took a moment for my words to sink in, but then a broad, goofy grin spread onto his face, and Aladdin threw his arms around me in a choking bear hug. My eyes widened in surprise, but then I hesitantly patted his back. "Errr, right," I said brilliantly.

But then, my happy little relief bubble was crushed, because when carpet turned, I had a full view of Jasmine's terrace.

And standing on that terrace was Jasmine, her long hair untied and billowing back behind her in the wind. Her face was frozen like stone, expressionless. Her eyes looked like they had been carved as her entire body was stiff, leaning slightly over her terrace as if trying to believe that her eyes were failing her. Behind her was Jala, who was holding a scimitar and pointing it at her throat, apparently trying to threaten her into bringing Jafar back.

But my friend had no mind for weaponry or blackmail right at that moment, because in her face, I could read the horrible misunderstanding that was running through her mind, over and over, and trying to believe that she was having the most horrible nightmare of her life.

Jasmine saw me and Aladdin embracing on a magic carpet, and that's what gave her the wrong message. I felt tears sting the corners of my eyes, and quickly pushed Aladdin away from me. He looked confused, until he saw where my eyes were. Slowly, unwillingly, he turned around. That's where he froze. For a moment, Jasmine and Aladdin's eyes locked, and they were gone into a world of misunderstandings, hurt, and betrayal that I could not follow into.

Princess and street rat.

Royalty and thief.

Woman and man.

Then, the gaze broke. Jasmine fled with reckless abandon back through the doors to her own terrace, with Jala trailing unwillingly and throwing us glances over her shoulder. Aladdin collapsed onto the carpet as he landed and moaned, his entire body was shaking. I quietly left him there, thinking it best to leave him be. I could not go back to my quarters tonight, not without shame, but I did so anyways.

Jasmine was not there in our room, but I found her sheets tossed, so she had been there and ran away. I sighed and got into my own smaller bed. Tomorrow morning, when things had cooled down a tad, I would try and reason with her.

But I did not have much hope.

**A/N: Ooooh, Aladdin is so busted!**


	18. Shock

**Disclaimer: Bloody heck, I don't want to write this anymore.**

**A/N: Review, or I will not update! **

**Chapter 18**

**Shock**

**(Sultana Kamaria)**

I sat in my private quarters, for lack of something better to do.

It was the third day after Jafar's disappearance. Nobody was kind enough to even offer me a slight explanation, their _Sultana_, as to why her Grand Vizier had suddenly disappeared without a trace, without a warning, and was supposedly rumored to never plan on coming back to Agrabah. It had set the entire palace into turmoil, and I was at a loss as to how to stop it.

Razoul, the fool, would only take orders from Jafar, and as he wasn't here, the rest of the guards were lounging about drinking to their heart's content. There wasn't a morsel that I could do about it expect by brute force, and my only means of brute force were the guards. I sighed and put my head in my hands. In all the long years that I had sat on the throne, nothing like this had ever happened before.

Speaking of drinking.

In all of the events that had been happening, I lacked the ability to forget that carpet ride with Jafar all those weeks ago. It had faded into distant gossip for others, but I still chose to remember. Do you know why? Jafar was drunk, and he was under the impression that I had been drunk too, but I had not. No, every detail and every word he had said to insult me was still placidly in my memory.

That was when I distinguished love for a man and love for my people apart. I did not love Jafar or had ever come close to it. Rather, I think he was more like the only son that I had ever had, though he was nearly as old as myself. It was something in my motherly instincts that told me I had a responsibility over the boy that had come to the palace to be taken in when he was only eight years old.

Jasmine and Aladdin were having a row, I thought, because they were never in the same room together. When they did not escape this predicament, they did not speak nor even look at the other. Sorrah usually sat in the middle, in between, with a rather pained expression written on her face. I did not understand it, nor did I make much effort to. These things settled themselves, and I had bigger problems to deal with.

……………………………..

That afternoon, I was procrastinating the work of some legal papers that sat in a large, large pile on my desk. There was a knock at the door, and I wearily replied, "Enter." In came Jasmine, looking rather nervous, with that boy Aladdin's genie trailing behind her. "Mother? I'd like to confess something." "Well, sit down while you're at it," I replied. She closed the door carefully. I didn't miss the fact that she locked it before turning back to me.

"I have a big secret, actually. Sorrah and Aladdin and Jafar all know about it, and we're all mixed up in it, really." Now, I was interested. The three of them with a secret I could understand, but how had Jafar come to be mixed up in anything to do with Aladdin? It was no secret that they openly loathed the other. "It's a long story," Jasmine added, considering. And then, she took out two lamps. Out oozed no less than two more genies, both female. One was pink, and one was green.

I didn't think I had ever received a bigger shock in my life. I would have fainted outright if I were not the Sultana. Jasmine smiled sheepishly. "Mother, this is Haillie and Jala. Jala is Jafar's genie, and Haillie is mine." Now, I needed to hear her story.

It was a long one. I felt myself being amazed as she told me how she was not my real daughter, but Sorrah was, and how there was a confusion among their little group as to how to introduce this subject both to me and the people of Agrabah. She told me how my line was not the actual royal line, where and how Jafar was, (and how he had ended up that way), and all of the other odds and ends.

When it was over, I breathed deeply.

"Jasmine, this is very serious." "Yes, Mother," she replied quietly. I still loved Jasmine like my own daughter, no matter what she said. Sorrah was a stranger to me. The pink genie, Haillie, chattered to fill the silence, though I was at a loss as to whom. The genie called Jala sat silently, glaring loathsomely at my daughter and refusing to so much as to open her mouth.

After several uncomfortably long minutes, I opened my mouth to speak, considered, and then closed it again. Several more minutes went by until I finally said, "Something must be done about this." It was only an obvious statement, but it held new meaning spoken my the Sultana of Agrabah. "We have several options. Option one is that we continue life as if none of this had ever happened. You will succeed the throne, the genies will remain hidden-" Here, I inclined my head to them, "-a new Grand Vizier will be chosen, you will marry Aladdin." Here, Jasmine flinched visibly.

"Or, the second option. The genies come out into the open, and we find a way to rescue Jafar. When he is back, all of this confusion about the proper royal bloodline will be solved. Either you, Sorrah, or one of these two lovely ladies here will inherit the throne after my time is over."

We could easily have taken the easy way out of this: take option one, in another matter of speaking. But our feelings for right and wrong were too strong to give up, and so, together, the five of us in my grand room decided to take action. It was decided that Haillie should go after Jafar, after Jasmine had heartily given her permission. Jala looked endlessly pleased about something.

Once Jafar was back, we would sort out the rest of this business. I shuddered at the idea of revealing all of this to the court, and worst of all, Agrabah. They would not approve of any of the three choices in line for their ruler, but one of them must be chosen, or Agrabah would fall. I sighed. Being Sultana was a harder job than any in the world, especially with a daughter like Jasmine.

"But, Mother! Jafar's going to plan and take over the throne!" "Oh, I'm sure that Haillie will find a way to persuade him otherwise before he comes back. Jafar values his word very much. A few threats won't hurt," I replied coolly. Jasmine looked rather doubtful about the whole affair. "I will deal with him," I added, which seemed to reassure her much more.

"Your bunch are dismissed," I finally uttered suddenly, out of the blue. I had at last realized why they were all there, looking at me, when I so desperately wanted to be alone to think over the matters of the last hour quite carefully. My head hurt with the huge ideas that had just been thrust into it. My mind was still struggling to keep up.

After they had all left and shut the door quietly behind them, I lay back on my bed and stared at the high, gilded gold ceiling of my bedroom.

Soon, I would have much work to do until all of this business was finally set in order and I could rule in relative peace once again. But for now, I needed my rest. It would be at least a week before Haillie could fetch Jafar, and so a week it was that I could rest. While nobody was listening to me in court, why not take a few days off?

I smiled to myself before my conscious drifted off into the black realm of sleep.

**A/N: It was a bit short, but an important chapter.**


	19. Rescued from the Modern World

**Disclaimer: Oh, bah with the disclaimer. I OWN EVERYTHING! HAH! (The police come in with piles of law suits that demand money) Err, right. I meant, ahem, THEY OWN EVERYTHING! HAH!**

**A/N: My cousins are coming back from their semi-trip tomorrow, so this is a last attempt to type a chapter in peace. Also, the documents uploader is once again being a butt, so unfortunately, I must spend my time staring longingly at my reviews and typing more and more chapters for the story that pile up in my documents. Oh, life is hard, (breaks down crying). Errr. Well. Anyways, I'm sure that you want to read the story. Yeah. **

**Chapter 19**

**Rescued from the Modern World**

**(Jafar)**

I was lost.

I wouldn't admit it to anybody, and for a while, not even myself. Jafar did not get lost, and I was Jafar. Technically, it was not possible in the laws of physics that I did not have any idea where I was. I settled with the fact that I was not lost, but merely unfamiliar with my surroundings and currently unable to think of a way to get out of the housing division in Irvine.

I heard a whooshing noise behind me. Too late, I whirled around to see three girls approaching on an odd mechanism composed of two wheels, several iron bars, handles, and a rubber seat. I only remember a flash of pain and an anguished scream before they ran me over.

…………….

An odd, persistent orange glow shaded the insides of my eyelids. I was looking at a sort of demented sunset with my eyes closed. A foolish, wide smile spread across my lips, until I was aware of voices talking. I shifted my shoulders ever so cautiously, and felt gravel rubbing against the red silk of my robe. The voices were young, though I could not understand the gender because they were hushed.

Of the fast English, I understood that they must have been the girls that had run me over. I tried to get up and demand an apology and probably torture them for a while, but when I moved, a searing pain erupted from the base of my back. I stopped writhing, and the voices stopped abruptly. "He's _awake_," whispered one voice out of the silence. Then another, saying a word that I had never heard before. I guessed that she was swearing.

The third girl laughed. I felt something prodding me in the side of my stomach. I groaned and rolled over on the ground, opening my eyes a crack to see blacktop. There wasn't much of it in Agrabah, but I came to associate it with black-dusted hands. My robes were beyond saving now. The girl was prodding me with a stick, I realized. To what terms had modern society lowered themselves to?

She said a few words that I had also never heard of. She wasn't swearing, I was fairly sure, but she was using slang.

I rolled back onto my back, (the aching pain again), and looked up at my torturers. (This was oddly backwards. It was too ironic that they were prodding me with sticks while I lay on the ground, when the positions should be reversed). One was blond, like that lunatic genie. That set me off to be wary of her. Nobody could meet Haillie and like blondes afterward.

The other two had black hair, like Jala. A lump formed in my throat. I refused to admit that I was scared and homesick, so I concentrated on them. Of the two black-haired girls, one had skin slightly lighter than mine but not as pale as the blond girl, and the other had darker skin than me. I shrugged. That was all I needed to know about them. Two of them had odd circles made of metal around their eyes.

"You're awake," said the girl with blond hair. I realized that her hair was not actually as pale as Haillie's. It had been a trick of the light. I refused to respond to her statement. The other two girls stood, openly staring at me with their arms crossed defiantly over their chests. The cursed machines that had run me over stood parked nearby: two pink, and one white.

"Should we call the _police_?" said the tan-skinned girl quietly. The last word she uttered was also one that I did not understand. Was my vocabulary really so limited? "No, Irvine is the safest city in America. We would be shaming their crime rate," laughed the last girl. I ignored their conversation, having just suffered another spasm of pain from the lower back. I groaned and rolled over.

The tanned girl's eyes widened. She chuckled, as if experiencing some inside joke. "Ella, we hurt his tailbone." My eyes widened too. My tailbone? If it was cracked enough, I would be immobilized for the rest of my life, and they were _laughing about it_! Were all children so cruel nowadays? I didn't have time to ponder my theory. "Can you walk?" asked the blonde one, stifling laughter as she prodded me with the long stick again. I grunted, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of hearing my crude English.

They did not help me up, nor did I expect them to. I pushed myself up. Two of them walked behind me on either side, and the blonde one led me to a large tree on the corner of the lot that they had dropped me in. There was a long building next to me: not tall by any degree, but quite long. I guessed that we were at an abandoned schoolhouse. I eyed the cracked remains of a wine bottle suspiciously as I sat down carefully in the grass. This time, the pain was not so distracting.

"So. Who are you?" asked the dark girl with the silver around her eyes. "Jafar," I replied. My voice was worn with disuse. They all assumed expressions of boredom. "And why are you dressed so weird?" asked another one. I didn't remember who, because I had closed my eyes. I didn't reply to that question. They were dressed quite strangely themselves: they were all wearing shortened pants, which women should not do as they are undergarments and should remain that way, and bagging overclothes.

The tan girl shrugged. "I'm late for dinner. He'll go home by himself." The other two left as well, climbing onto the strange mechanisms and riding away through an opening in the low gate of the schoolhouse. I sighed and leaned against the strong bark of the tree. How could fate be so cruel to me as to entrust my destiny to a gaggle of cruel girls that could be no older than eleven years of age?

…………………..

"Jafar. Jafar!" I heard a voice hiss. At first, alarm shot through me like the pain in my back. They were back to torment me. But gradually, as senses took over sleep stupor, I realized that the voice was female, but older than theirs. One that I would recognize anymore. It was one that I would normally be extremely annoyed to hear, and yet right now, I blessed it.

"Haillie?"

"Well, who else?" it replied irritably, pulling me upright. My tailbone struck a root. Stars paraded before my eyes as the numbing pain worked its magic and tears sprang into my eyes. The genie came into focus, hovering just above the ground. A midnight blue sky stretched above me, as well as the large tree's leaves, and grudgingly, I admitted that it all was rather beautiful.

"Are you going to gape all night, or are you going to come with me and ask me as to why I'm here? Inform me when you decide to stop being a gaping idiot," remarked Haillie. With a start, I realized that she seemed rather sane. And that had only one explanation: Jasmine had made a wish, most likely to get me here. "Why are you here?" I asked through gritted teeth, no longer glad to see her.

Her face smirked in the night. "If you don't want me here, I guess I'll just leave." She vanished in a puff of pink smoke. I started. "Haillie? Haillie! Come back!" She reappeared, looking rather smug. "Now, are we ready to cooperate? I can always hold a conversation with Steve and Bob while we wait." I shook my head. She was still as insane as ever, except now her brain worked. That was no stroll in the park in my direction.

To begin with, why _was_ she here? "Haillie…how did you get across the Pacific ocean?" I asked. She shrugged. "Same way you did: in a box. Except you had the luxury of being on a barge: I floated around for days." I gulped down the bile that flowed out of my throat. Oh, the seasickness that would had plagued me then!

"Oh, and the Sultana knows everything," added Haillie conversationally. I started, causing my tailbone to punish me. After I had caught my breath, I said very slowly, "So you'll bring me back, will you? How am I supposed to reappear before the Sultana?" Haillie glared at me. "Jasmine knows what you were trying to do before her wish. That's why she made it." I gulped.

After a bit of thinking, I replied, "If you take me back to Agrabah, I won't continue my plans to take over the throne and you can have bananas." "Let me think about that…done," she said a little too quickly. I smiled. Some things never changed.

The two of us vanished in a puff of pink smoke, speeding to Agrabah. What I didn't understand was why Haillie and me couldn't have arrived that way.

**A/N: Once they're back, chaos will insue! Who will get the throne? What will Jala do?**


	20. Aftermath

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything. Well, half of the plotline and credit for typing it through. But that's all. No suing. I can't pay you.**

**A/N: For lack of something better to do, I have decided to type yet ANOTHER chapter of Differences: yes, I know. You all love me! This could go on the plus side of things! Woo hoo! **

**I apologize if the last few chapters were either confusing, short, or OC. The plotline is so complicated that I'm a little confused myself.**

**Chapter 20**

**Aftermath**

**(Jala)**

Jafar was going to come back.

All of a sudden, my world that had been violently shattered into pieces magically built itself together again, like an enchanted puzzle. My perspective was bright again, I could think, and my soul was no longer a tortured one.

Over the past days, I had been long gone into a kind of deep depression that nobody could explain. I had been awfully foolish, rash, and utterly unlike myself, the facts of which I hoped Jasmine would understand when I would go to explain the scimitars to her.

It did not matter to me at all the fact that Jafar would most likely be furious with me once he was back. No, all that mattered to me then was that I would be seeing his face again soon, no matter what kind of expression it was bearing. Silently, I chided myself half-heartedly for being such a love-blinded fool. But it was for naught. He was coming back: nothing could dampen my spirits then.

The consoling thought was all that kept me sane for the next afternoon. Haillie was gone. It made me realize how much I relied on her to keep me normal the days that Jafar had gone missing. Jasmine had vanished, not having been seen by anybody except for her own mother since yesterday. Aladdin was sheepishly avoiding everybody, as was Sorrah. Only Genie and the Sultana remained, but I had no wish to talk to either of them.

I spent the long hours that stretched into a millennia curled into a tight little ball of anticipation in my lamp, trying not to accidentally do magic while I was feeling the adrenaline rushing into my veins. (Figuratively speaking, of course). It was dangerous for me to be without my master, without _wishes_ for too long. It gave me the ability to use my activated magic for my own purposes, and genies were not supposed to do that.

No, genies were created to serve humans, as my master had so bluntly put it.

The memory put out my excitement for a while, but not a very long while. I did not care if Jafar hated me. The fact that he had no feelings for me was quite plain in the air. I was a genie, for Allah's fate, and it would never work out. My heart tugged at my conscious in a mad game of tug-of-war. A little voice that sounded strangely like Haillie when she sucked on helium kept repeating in the back of my head, arguing with me about the finer point in a humble genie's life.

_Stop being a lovesick fool._

_It's not something I can help!_

_You're Jala, for crying out loud! Why are you being so cruddy un-Jala like?_

_Oh, shut up._

_You see what I mean?_

_Go away._

So it continued, and I endured.

……………………………….

I had gone into the trance-like state that genies substitute for sleep, when I was awakened by a loud BANG! Groggily, I floated out of the lamp, rubbing my eyes and cursing whoever had interrupted my rest so rudely. The unfriendly feelings vanished quickly, however, when I saw who it was.

Haillie. And Jafar.

Though it wasn't strictly necessary for genies to breathe, I stopped for a moment. It was rather uncomfortable, but I did because I seemed to have forgotten how to. Haillie had the usual expression on her face: bored, insane, and out of sorts. Jafar looked just plain disoriented. This made me happy. A surge of hope shot through my chest. If he was looking disoriented, and not mad, then my chances were better than usual.

His glazed eyes shifted around his surroundings, as if not daring to believe what he saw. His eyes drifted over me with indifference, as if I were a lamp or the bed. This normally would have made me rather unhappy, but for now, I endured. Then, so suddenly that he even startled Haillie, he let out a wild whoop of joy and knelt to kiss the ground. I started. This was so very unlike Jafar.

What had modern civilization done to him?

After my sister had explained everything to me, and Jafar was put under a leash, as Haillie would put it, we all sat down. Before, I had not worried about a trivial thing like conversation. Now, the urging need to break the ice overtook my senses. The moment was very uncomfortable, altogether. Jafar looked at me, and I looked at him. He looked quite different. Maybe older.

"What have you been up to while I was gone?" he asked wearily, finally. I opened my mouth to answer, delighted. Then I realized that he was talking to Iago. Disappointment burned through my lungs like wildfire. My tongue flopped down uselessly like a big nuisance in the way, dying to do something useful for a change. I sighed. My master noticed the noise and turned slightly, without interest: like I had spoken and he had to answer. Like it was a duty, an obligation.

Iago chirped something rude and did a tango. I ignored him.

"You're back," I finally said, deciding that it was neither rude nor polite. It was simply a fact that had to be stated. Jafar nodded. "Yes, I am." Well, so much for that line of conversation. "I…missed you," I choked out. A pained expression crossed his face for a moment, but vanished so quickly that I thought that I had imagined it. "I…could say that I missed you too, but that would a lie, wouldn't it?" he finally replied, trying to sneer but without success.

A jolt of pain flashed through my chest, like I had been burned. "Yes, it would a lie," I finally whispered weakly in reply.

And that was it.

………………………..

The next day wasn't much better. Something seemed to have happened in between Sorrah, Jasmine, and Aladdin. None of them would speak a word to tell me what it was about, though I guessed that something was very seriously wrong by the way they refused to meet each other's eyes or speak. Their current hobby was to avoid each other throughout the vast palace, (it wasn't hard to do).

Genie and Haillie weren't taking it too well, but being insane, Haillie quickly got over it. Genie, on the other hand, was concerned in his usual cocky manner for Aladdin's health. He promptly stated so, drawing a weak smile from Laddie. Jasmine was like the shell that she had been when Aladdin liked Sorrah again. I really didn't like the hard version of Jasmine.

We had bigger problems, however. Like who was in line for the throne?

**A/N: (again). Thanks for the reviews, Jafarcrazy! I love the long ones. I wish Haillie and you both good luck on the contest ;)**


	21. Meeting Windstar

**A/N: OH. My. Good. God. I AM SO SORRY! School started, and suddenly…(large piles of homework land on head). Yeah. You get the point. But the update was so inexcusably slow! I don't mind if you rant and rave and throw knives at me…but I'll try to behave better.  Hope you enjoy the chapter, anyways. If some facts are off, it's because I'm a little rusty at writing fanfiction right now…it's been TOO long. So sorry, again! Drop in comments if you feel I am deserving!**

**Chapter 21**

**Meeting (Windstar)**

**(Sorrah)**

Guilt. It's a terrible feeling, and I had felt it a number of times in my life. But never this badly.

It curls up in your stomach and falls asleep like a rock, and it just won't go away until your conscience is cleared. Usually, I felt guilt when I snuck into a corner to read the afternoon away, and hid from the head maid calling me to join her for the chores. (Well, I didn't blame myself for that one, when I thought back on it.)

Except now, it was so bad. It burned like fire in my arteries, and I couldn't even look Jasmine in the face. You ask why I didn't just tell her the truth? Let's face it, that all goes fine and dandy in the books that I loved to read. But what real person would let you get farther than "Let me explain" without cutting you off with a "I don't want to hear it" expression?

So, I spent my nights tossing and turning, and waking up with bags under my eyes. It was needless to say that me and Jasmine were no longer on friendly terms. Aladdin couldn't look at _me_ either, so I spent my days talking to Genie and the head maid.

A few days after Jafar's return, it was a perfect day in Agrabah. (Those are hard to come by, by the way.) It was sunny, but not humid or searing hot. The sand was cool if you stepped into it, people were buzzing with noise in the bazaar, and I was stuck doing chores. Again.

Usually, I would be waiting on Jasmine, but today, since more help was needed anyways, I took the chance to scrub the entrance hall floor tiles just to avoid her. The mosaic built into the floor depicted a large-nosed man with a cheesy smile, and I screwed up my face at him and concentrated on his nose while I ignored the smarting acid on my hands.

Scrub. Back and forth, up and down. Don't miss his nostril. Back and forth. Up and down.

Finally, I threw down the rag and sat cross-legged on the floor, and watched the head maid work. Her hair blew down in wisps, covering her pretty face. "Go out to the bazaar, Sorrah, and buy yourself a loaf of bread! Your expression is making my heart break." She sat up and smiled at me.

I didn't need a second urging.

I sprung up, thanked her hurriedly, and ducked out of the grand doors. The sunlight warmed my skin. I hastily wiped my acid-covered hands on the inside of my dirty apron, and rushed down the street at full tilt toward the bazaar.

OOF!

Next thing I knew, I had grazed my elbows. Pain erupted from the right one, like fire, as I lay on my back in the dirt path, wincing. Now the arm was numb. Holy llama, I had hit the funny bone.

Squinting into the sun, I saw a cart heading full tilt my way, dragging a cloud of dust. Fear pressed adrenaline through my veins…_I was directly in its path._ It headed faster, and faster. When the driver finally saw me, it was too late. The horses reared back. I expected to be crushed any moment.

And then, a wiry hand gripped my elbow and yanked me forcibly off of the street, into the cool shadows at the side. I was about to scream, but a bony hand covered my mouth. "If you wanted to die, then you picked an interesting way, lying out in the road there, like that. 'Twas me you bumped into in the first place. Sorry about that. Be more careful next time, little dove."

I was released.

I whirled around, and faced an ancient old woman, stooped with age and her brown, warty face surrounded by a few feeble wisps of pale silver hair. But that hadn't waned her strength. I rubbed my arm where she had grabbed me. "Thank you…?" "Windstar," she told me. I blinked. "Pardon?"

"Windstar. You may call me Windstar," she said, motioning a little impatiently.

"Thank you, then, Lady Windstar. May I ask what you're doing here today?" I asked politely. Windstar snorted. "Pish-posh. You must be from the palace." I shrugged sheepishly.

"No use for finery with me. Now, what's bothering you, little one?" I blinked. Was I really that much of an open book? The old hag chuckled. "Oh, yes, I know. I have lived much longer than you have, cherub, and know a great deal more things than a slip of a thing like you living in the palace. Now, what's bothering you?"

I pursed my lips and sat down amongst the weeds that grew in profusion amongst the side of the road. Windstar cackled. "I'll wait." "It's rather…complicated," I finally reasoned out. That was a half truth. Rather complicated was a very under-stated opinion.

"Try me."

"Well, you see, I'm the princesses' personal handmaiden," I began slowly. Windstar nodded, not looking surprised at all. "Her husband-to-be, Aladdin, took me out for a magic carpet ride," I continued, deciding to edit out the whole "crush on me" thing. Windstar seemed to notice, but didn't interrupt.

"She saw me with him, and thought that it was…something else, if you get my drift." Windstar sighed. "Have you tried talking to her?" "Yes, but she won't listen." "Oh, but that is where you are wrong!" cried Windstar, holding up a gnarled index finger.

I looked at her quizzically. "It is just that you have not been speaking clearly enough." And then she was gone. Just like that: vanished into the weeds after she turned tail. I looked uncertainly after her, wanting to thank her and ask her what she meant at the same time.

……………………….

When I got back to the castle, the sun was already setting out on the horizon. I smiled at its beautiful painting colors before turning into Jasmine's room, careful to creep around her as she read her book, and locked myself into my own room.

I thought about what Windstar had meant. It was true that I hadn't tried especially hard to get across the message to Jasmine that Aladdin's carpet ride wasn't exactly a romantic-of-the-year. Then I knew what I had to do.

………………………

Fifteen minutes later, Genie, Haillie, Jala, Jafar, Aladdin, me, the Sultana, and Jasmine were all crowded into her quarters. Genie yawned, poofing out a pillow for himself, and lay down on the floor. He looked at the pillow, thought better apparently, then made it disappear again, and lay down in Haillie's lap. Haillie shoved him off and let him drool all over the carpet.

Aladdin looked down at his feet, and Jasmine looked away, fingering the hem of her sleeve. "Everybody." I cleared my throat. "Jasmine especially. I want to make clear that Aladdin didn't take me on a 'romantic' carpet ride that night." Jasmine flinched visibly, and Aladdin bent his head more.

Nobody moved. I had never been good at this type of thing.

"People! Listen up!" I shouted, going completely out of character. Genie snorted, Aladdin jumped, everybody else instantly snapped to attention. "What part of _Jasmine and Aladdin, you two are made for each other_ do you not understand?" I shouted some more. "I don't love Aladdin! At least not in that way! As a friend, I love him as much as the next person, but Jasmine! How could you ever believe that he would dump you for me? I'm not a special person, but you _are."_

Jasmine looked up. Her eyes were filled with tears. Then she hugged me tightly, and said in my ear. "One part though. You are special." Then she looked at Aladdin. He looked up. She knelt over and kissed him on the cheek. Aladdin turned a bright shade of red.

"Well, now that that's over with," Jafar muttered, his face filled with contempt. "Has everybody forgotten that we have much bigger problems to deal with?" Jasmine backed away from Aladdin slowly, shrugging. "Like what?" "Oh, I don't know," said Jafar sarcastically. "Maybe…WHO GETS THE THRONE, for instance?"

Jala sighed. "Power-maniac," she muttered under her breath. "Arrrr, it be a pirate genie," Jafar shot back. I looked confused. "Don't ask," Haillie stage-whispered conspiratorially to me. I giggled and nodded.

"That's true, Jafar's got a point there," Jasmine agreed. The Sultana sighed. "Hello? I'm not dead yet." "Retiring?" Jafar asked hopefully. The Sultana glared at him. "Not even close. In any case, it's not like this has to be decided by tomorrow, darling," she reminded Jasmine.

Jasmine sighed. "Mother, we can't put this off anymore. So far, pretty much everybody in this room except for Genie is eligible for the throne." Genie pouted. "Why'd I have to get kicked out of the in-line-for-throne club?"

The Sultana nodded slowly. "I believe that a meeting before the press is in order. The genies can't be kept hidden any longer." Jala gulped, Haillie remained blank-expressional, Genie was indifferent.

"Oh no. Not the press," whispered Jasmine.

**A/N: Like? It's pretty long. "Windstar" is actually the name of a very pretty ballad that I am currently playing in school band. I thought that it was a rather pretty name Next chapter, coming hopefully sooner than this one did, is about the press. Dun dun dun dun. WHO WILL COME OUT ON TOP? Considering, there will be at least two more chapters plus an epilogue **


	22. The Press

**A/N: This chapter was difficult to start, because I just couldn't decide who's POV it should be in. I think my sense of humor is shriveling, so it's supposed to be on the more comical side. I spent like a long time debating with myself who's POV it should be in. Notify me if that just made any sense at all. Nice review, by the way, Haillie **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Aladdin.**

**Chapter 22**

**The Press**

**(Laddie)**

The royal palace was still a mystery to me.

As far as I was concerned, the place was tangled up in political traps and hidden meanings, the type of stuff that street rats didn't have to worry about. To be frankly honest, I didn't care for it at all, if it hadn't been for Jasmine. I'd do anything for Jasmine, and I'm not even trying to be cheesy. Jasmine was my light in a room of darkness, my flower in a garden of weeds, my…

You get the point.

Well, remember how I said I would do _anything_ for her? Anything at all? I wasn't lying. Except for going into the same room with _the press_. Anything but them.

Yes, I did realize that I was going to become Sultan of Agrabah, (possibly), someday if this whole thing worked out with me and Jasmine in favor, and I would most likely be dealing with the press everyday. But from what I had seen and heard from them, it was not an experience that I was, at any means, looking forward to.

I also realized that it was absolutely necessary to inform the press of our present situation. But I didn't want to do it, and the fact that it was unavoidable didn't make me want to do it any more.

So, there we stood, in front of the doors that led into the throne room. Inside, there was a muttered chattering. The Sultana was on my right, Jasmine was on my left. On the Sultana's right was Jafar, looking cool and composed. If his hands hadn't been shaking, I would have thought that he was immune to the press.

Genie had decided, that in the present situation, he would hide out. He had currently shrunk to the size of my pinky toenail, and was hiding in my waist sash. Jala's lamp was shiny and foreboding, resting there on Jafar's black sash. Haillie, on the other hand, had chosen to reside into her lamp also, but her lamp was hot pink. I wonder why.

Then we pushed open the door.

I was listening to the squabbling men's conversation, since they hadn't notice the four of us walk in. "Stop eating my walking stick!" cried one man, launching himself across the table, only to get hit in the face with a pastry filled with gooey sauce. A fat man with something slimy dripping from his nose apologized profusely, then grumbled something like, "Thanks a lot for getting in the way of my flying pastry. Now there's gooey stuff coming out of this thingy."

Just then, an immensely tiny little man with an amazingly large handlebar mustache walked past, with his pointy nose stuck into the air, and finally noticed us. "Order!" he cried to the rest of the wildly screaming men. Instantly, silence hung in the air. A lamp detached itself from its holder on the wall and exploded on the tile.

"Oh, crap," said the small man, and then quickly threw himself on the ground before the Sultana and begged forgiveness for his language. The Sultana sighed and dropped her face into her hands. "Oh, Allah," I heard her mutter.

………………..

Fifteen minutes later, everybody was seated at their respective places around the long, oval press table. Jafar and the Sultana sat at the front in large, throne-like chairs with me and Jasmine on either side. Sorrah had not been allowed to attend the meeting, because of her status.

"Men, listen, and listen well," the Sultana began in a booming voice. "Today, we are called together to be witnesses of some earth-shattering news, that will, perhaps, affect the fate of Agrabah for the next generation and on."

An extremely old man snorted in his sleep and slipped down a notch in his chair.

The Sultana promptly ignored him, and continued. "It has been discovered that my bloodline is not the true heir to the throne of Agrabah, and what is more, Jasmine is not my blood daughter." Silence. Then, whispering. Gasps. Some "No!"s.

"Silence!"

I had always wondered how royalty knew how to do that. I shuddered in my seat and scooted as far away as possible from the weed-like young man sitting next to me, because he had stretched his index finger as far up his nostril as it would go, and was currently rooting around for something.

"This is shocking news, I know. But I have more. As you are all sitting down, I find this a fitting time to present it. Jafar has recently come upon another genie, and my daughter Jasmine, it seems, has possessed one for the last seventeen years." Silence this time, painful against my eardrums.

It was broken when the booger-man exclaimed, "I found gold!" and took his finger out of his nose. Jafar smirked and brought out Jala's lamp. "Jala! Arise!"

She materialized in a wisp of green smoke and grimaced, annoyed. "'Arise'? Since which century was that one used to call out genies? Not in _my_ lifetime, I can tell you that, and that's saying something."

Jafar knitted his thin brow together, and Jala fell silent. "Haillie," said Jasmine, looking like she dreaded Haillie's meeting with the press.

Haillie did come out, but she took one look and screamed an ear-shattering shriek. I covered my ears and winced. "The press! Oh, Allah, hide me!" She dove behind Jala, who sighed, rolled her eyes, and glared at Jafar. "I hate you." Jafar smirked back. "I find pleasure in replying that I hate you too."

Instantly, the press took out cameras and started snapping pictures. (I wonder where they got them. I myself had never seen such contraptions before. There were only rumors from the Outside.) One was of Jala and Jafar.

Jafar turned to Jala and smirked again. "I wonder if you will show up in that picture, or do genies not appear?" Jala fumed, and vanished into the lamp so quickly that it rattled and spun in fast circles over the tabletop.

And that was when the earthquake struck.

It was only a small earthquake, but it shook the table, and it turned over. It was about to crush Jasmine! She had fallen over, but the men had been able to get away from the heavy stone of the table. "Haillie! I wish for me to be safe!" she screamed.

And then Jasmine was standing beside me, looking astonished. The table landed with a BOOM, and the dust settled. Haillie looked amazed too. "That was my third wish," she said quietly. "I'm not longer your genie." Jasmine didn't seem to process that fact either, and promptly fainted into my outstretched arms.

I sighed, and brushed away a strand of hair from her forehead. That's when Jafar made his move. "You might not have Jasmine as a mistress anymore, but now that you're open you're _my_ genie!" Haillie's face contorted into a grimace, and moaned.

"Oh no. Oh have mercy, no."

Jafar's only response was to cackle gleefully like a child.

**A/N: Hope you liked the little twist!**


	23. Toxic

**A/N: I've been profusely reading Naruto fanfiction lately. Now I want to puke over any sap or fluff, so I've decided to keep writing this fic rabidly.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Aladdin. Haillie owns part of the fic, OK? (Not the insane genie, the other Haillie. Thank you for the reviews, by the way, everybody!)**

**Chapter 23**

**Toxic**

**(Jafar)**

Oh, Allah.

I don't know what mad sense in mother nature caused me to take Haillie on as my own genie. Hadn't I learned that Jala alone was enough to handle? But noooooooo, I had to take her up as soon as Jasmine's time was up. What kind of softened idiot had I become?

I sat, staring defiantly at the pink jinn silently. Too silently…the room pressed upon my eardrums as Haillie stared right back, and Jala ignored us both. Silence, and more silence.

"Well, this sucks," said Haillie.

I sighed, got up, and went over to my desk. There was a large stack of papers, ready for my quill to get to work. It didn't mean that the idea of signing papers for hours on end was particularly entertaining to me at the moment, but anything was better than sitting around with two genies, both of which now expected me to make wishes. _Five_ wishes, in total.

I was just about to sit down, when I slipped on a banana peal and fell forward, cursing as my rib cage caught on the table edge. Automatically, I tipped forward from the impact. Jala reached out to catch me, and then we ended up kissing.

It was an odd sensation, to say the least, with your rib cage wrapped around a table edge and kissing your jinn. I don't really know how to explain it, since I don't believe it's ever happened before.

And then I realized what I was doing, and pushed away, and spat a few times into the wastebasket. Iago was making kissing sounds. I shut his cage door in his face. "Hey! What's the big idea?" he squawked angrily. I wiped my saliva on the back of my sleeve, (something I had meant to leave behind in grade school), and glared at my parrot. "Don't get your feathers ruffled."

I promptly sat down at the table properly and acted as if nothing unusual had happened, though I felt the blood rushing from my neck and tingling my face. Haillie sat silent, with her mouth open wide enough that it probably would have touched the floor, and her eyeballs were looking back and forth in between me and Jala, as if trying to decide who's reaction to watch first.

Me, well, I avoided looking at Jala and spent the day signing papers. The scratching and scratching of my quill was all you could hear for the next half day. Jala stayed there on the table, annoyingly, the entire time, though Haillie left in a huff, sniffing under her breath, something about "Men."

At last, I was finished with the last paper. Slowly, I looked up. Jala's cheeks were an odd shade of brown, which I guessed was the effect with red on green. She was staring, wide-eyed at me with those large, kohl-outlined eyes. I propped myself up and waited for her to say something.

"Well? Are you going to gape all day?" I finally asked irritably when she failed to utter a single word.

Jala shook her head and looked down. "Sorry. I didn't mean to…er…kiss you," she finally whispered. I snorted and stood up, getting ready to go out of the door. "I guess I was right then, wasn't I?" I said, pausing at the front of the open door. Jala looked up. "About how you couldn't resist me?" I closed the door before the lamp she threw at me could hit.

…………………….

My feet had a mind of their own. They took me down several corridors, even though my mind wasn't really into it. An odd feeling was swimming somewhere in my mind, though I tried my best to stamp it out. I clouded my judgment and made it absolutely impossible to think. I couldn't figure it out, for the world of me, what it was.

At last, I found myself in front of Aladdin and Jasmine's door, (they had moved in together). Tentatively, I knocked. Sorrah answered, looking sweaty and slightly hassled.

She had a duster in her hand.

"Ah, Jafar," she muttered and stood aside for me to go in.

Jasmine looked up from her book, where she was reading it on the bed. Aladdin had his arm slung loosely around her waist, and was reading over her shoulder. The two of them looked like that they had never been alone in their lives, sitting molded together like that. It gave me an odd pang somewhere in between my stomach and my heart.

"Oh, I assume you're here about Haillie," said Jasmine immediately. I shook my head, taking a moment to realize what she was talking about, and then nodded abruptly. "Ah, yes. Haillie."

The conversation didn't actually get much further than that. Aladdin hurriedly left, mumbling something about "tea", Sorrah missed very many dusty spots and abuprtly moved to the next adjoined room. It was just me and Jasmine. "Sit, please," she motioned, picking up her book again. I did. My knees seemed to give out.

"Jafar, please, take me seriously on this," she said suddenly after a long stretch of uncomfortable silence. I sat forward to listen, and did that trick of pricking my ears. The princess laughed. "Well, anyways. Haillie's been with me a long time. It's so strange, not having her here. But, I need to ask you a favor."

I looked warily at her.

"You already have Jala, with two wishes left, and Haillie, with three fresh ones. You don't even know what to do with them, so I beg of you. Those two are good jinn. I think that you should wish them free. Even if you did decide to agree with me, it would still leave you three wishes. I don't care what you use them for, just promise me that it won't be for an evil purpose again."

I cringed. She had hit my weak spot.

Jasmine smiled softly at me. "I know, that's a lot to digest, but please, consider it." I sat back, regaining my calm manner, and said smoothly, "I will consider it."

"But there's something else, isn't there? That's bothering you?" she asked softly, so that Aladdin couldn't hear. I swallowed, and shook my head slowly. "Jafar. Men are all open books. I can tell. If you won't tell me, at least talk to Aladdin about it." I shook my head more violently. The street rat? Never.

The princess sighed, and picked up her book again. "Men are all the same: stubborn."

**A/N: Hope you liked! It was written in a hurry, so…**


	24. Rebellion

**A/N: Thank you for all the kind comments! I really appreciate the extra-long reviews, even if their main purpose is for a contest! I mean, it benefits all, right? So what's the harm?**

**Anyways, I appreciate both compliments and criticism, (well of course we all love the compliments better). I'm sick of the weak Jala too, but that's the way lovesickness makes you. I am going to worm my way back into the kick-butt Jala somehow, even if it kills my writing! I hate the weak Jala too much. Shudder.**

**And I know this Author's Note is just too long, thank you. The Sultana is supposed to be a dull, flat person, but I do absolutely agree, to put it frankly, that my writing in her chapters suck. (I expect violent cheers from Haillie at this point.) I'm going to try my hardest to write better at that, honest, I will! **

**Thanks again. Huggle squish. (Don't ask). And I did consider that the Aladdin movies take place considerably before America was known to exist, (heck, they thought the world was flat!), but I've edited it. Since Agrabah is actually a magical city, I've decided that they don't venture into the "outside" world much anyways, so nobody pretty much knows about their existence.**

**Wow. That was a knock-yourself-out authors note in length.**

**-DewWater**

**Disclaimer: Sadly, I still do not happen to own Aladdin. And Haillie still has part of the fic in her hands.**

**Chapter 24**

**Rebellion**

**(Sultana You-Know-Who)**

Books.

Mountains and piles and hills and stacks and great big mounds and dusty heaps of them.

They surrounded my bed, filled the many bookshelves, ravaged the table and made my pillow hard by sneaking under it when I least suspected it. Fiction books, history books, science pamphlets, last year's archive articles. I had them all right here in my suite.

I don't know when my love for books began. Perhaps when I was a tiny child, when the tall bookshelves of the royal library were always so mysterious to me because try as I might, I just could not reach the top. My father, (Allah rest his soul), used to pick me up under the arms so that I could marvel at the golden writing on the worn bindings.

Now, I had a whopping collection of over 1000 books, all somehow fitting into my room so that I still had place to, well, live. The better half were fiction novels, stories of jinn and robbers and foxy-witted tailors. I had loved Agrabah's fairy tales, as well as that of other nation's, most for as long as I could remember, so naturally they abounded in my vast collection.

The history books I was less fond of. Gore had never appealed to me very much, to the disappointment of Aladdin's Genie.

I had brought out my entire collection for a reason: to distract me. I now had three genies, some very insane politicians to keep in check, (I don't think that part had changed much in the past few months), and Jafar possibly plotting to overtake the throne. Again. Déjà vu, anyone?

I sighed and put my head in my hands ,fingering a strand of silvery-white that was growing from the temple. Was I really getting old so fast? Anxiously, I smoothed the tips of my fingers over my face for wrinkles. The only ones were in front of my ears, because when I was nervous, I wiggled them. It was an old habit, and an odd one in the least.

There was so much to be done, and yet I could not figure out what it was. How could I suppress Jafar? He was the Grand Vizier, and I could hardly have somebody tail him. Jafar had rather unpleasant ways of disposing unwanted attention.

I opened the door and walked out into a sunlight-gilded hallway, feeling the sudden urge for fresh air. On the balcony facing the western courtyard, I gazed out over my city, searching around in my mind desperately for a solution to the problems that we were facing now. More precisely, _I _was facing.

I was just about to turn back when a gloved, black hand clamped tightly over my mouth.

Needless to day, I tried to scream but found that I could not. My assailant, even now, had switched hands, and whipped me around. His brown face was masked, and the eyes were an odd shade of brilliant green, bright cat-yellow around the irises.

I must have looked very frightened, because he smirked under the mask and said in a drawling, slithering voice, "No need to be frightened, Highness." The voice was too mocking and dripping with sarcasm. "Your death would prove rather disappointing to me and my boss."

With that, he switched his right hand covering my mouth. I tried to scream before he pushed a white rag stained with something awful-smelling against my nose tightly, but my throat had closed up with terror. Where were my bodyguards? I glanced up at the roof. Of course. He'd come down from there. I had never thought of that.

There was some kind of drug in the rag, I realized sleepily.

Too late, the drug-induced stupor was clouding my mind. Images swam in a colorful haze before my eyes. Over the battlements of the castle, I was awake long enough to glimpse more black-masked people armed with weapons with many peasants with pitchforks. A siege, I thought drearily.

And then blackness closed in, first from the corners of my eyes, and then everywhere. I didn't remember anything more after that.

**A/N: Dun dun dun dun!**


	25. Revival

**A/N: Me again! I hope that you guys don't think that this was a slow update, it was kind-of in the middle. I mean, it was under a week, but longer than usual…so…yeah. Or, at least, it's under a week while I'm typing this. If I post it later, then, I am very, very sorry.**

**Please review. I really don't want to revert to reviewing on Differences again. I mean, that was just plain pathetic, OK? Save me from patheticness! (Is that a word?)  
I need sugar. Drop a bag or two off if you ever see me around please!**

**-DewWater**

**Disclaimer: I don't believe I will ever, have ever, or do own Aladdin or anything related to Aladdin. And I don't believe that my plot bunnies will ever get as spiffy as Haillie's, so tanks to you! (No, 'tanks' is not a typo. It's slang for us!)**

**And without all you reviewer people, this story would not have been made possible without you guys, so thank you so much, especially Jafarcrazy, who's stuck with this story since the beginning! (faints from thankfulness)**

**Chapter 25**

**Revival**

**(Jala, Genie of the Lamp)**

Oh, dear, dear, _dear_ Allah.

I seemed to be saying "Allah" a lot lately, but that must be my imagination.

In any case, I actually have a reason for it this time. The Sultana's been kidnapped. No kidding, the woman that is best protected in this city has been kidnapped, whipped right out from under our noses and taken to who-knows-where. Oh, dear Allah.

On top of that, the adrenaline rush that the news gave me finally cleared my mind. Have you ever been lovesick, and then the adrenaline wakes you up, and you realize what a weak-minded idiot you've been? It's a great feeling, actually.

Well, the old me was back, and the old me was perfectly fine with that. Currently, I was thinking up ways to keep sane and also find a way to keep the weak-kneed Jala at bay for the rest of my life.

Most of the troops that were originally guarding the castle have been sent out to search for Her Royal Majesty. This also presents a problem for us, because while she is missing, the Grand Vizier is technically supposed to assume the throne. And hardly anybody is happy with the idea of Jafar climbing into the velvet throne chair, (A/N: FUZZY! NO TOUCHY!), except for perhaps Razoul.

The entire court is buzzing with gossip about the whole Jasmine-is-not-the-real-heir to the throne thing. I mean, who wouldn't? But it's presenting difficulties to our little group. Who should rule while the Sultana is gone? Jasmine and Aladdin, who would normally have been the heirs to the throne? Jafar, who is the current Grand Vizier? Sorrah, who is the technical heir? Or Haillie and me, who were the original heirs? In this kind of chaos, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody thought up a reasonable argument for _the press_ to rule Agrabah.

Shudder. I take that back.

In any case, as currently, I had decided to pretend that the kiss had never happened. When I suggested this to Jafar, he looked innocent and asked right back, "What kiss?" That's when I figured out that we were both back to normal, (thank Allah! There I go again), but unfortunately, I still loved him. Is this normal?

I was sitting, bored, in Jafar's quarters with Haillie. Five wishes to the man with the blackest heart in Agrabah. Tell me, how is this reasonable?

Haillie was faring even worse than I was with the idea that Jafar was now her master. Since they had been enemies right from the insane start, (was it really not that long ago?), it wasn't really a party for her. She spent her days moping, certain that Jafar would not make her grant wishes just to make her suffer.

The door to Jafar's rooms clicked open, and the Grand Vizier himself swept in. He looked tired, drawn. And old. Yes, that was the word to describe the drooping shoulders very well, how he seemed completely sagging with no self-confidence.

He collapsed on the bed. Me and Haillie had learned it was best not to say anything at all when this happened. Finally, Jafar's head snapped up. "I'm a failure, aren't I?" he asked.

Me and Haillie looked at each other. And decided that we really didn't want to answer that, if we were obligated to tell the truth.

"Just answer me," he said wearily.

"Er, well, you're not a _complete_ failure," said my genius sister. Jafar sighed. "Jala, do you want to be free?" Well, that caught me off guard. Had he finally snapped? "What?" I asked blankly. He looked irritated now. "Do you want me to make you human again?" "And where do I come into all of this?" Haillie butted in, sounding offended.

Jafar completely ignored her.

Finally, I decided a façade was best for this, and crossed my arms. "Well, then, just get on with the wishing," I said, looking at the ceiling. Jafar smirked, I could see him out of my peripheral vision.

"I wish that you were human."

Poof.

It was a strange and yet wonderful feeling. I felt _solid_ and _free_ like I hadn't in, well, a thousand years. I looked at my hands and flexed my cinnamon-brown fingers. Jafar was staring at me. Couldn't take his eyes away. "Am I really that much of an eyesore?" I grumbled.

Jafar shook his head.

Haillie looked at him, and then at me. "And where do I come into all of this again?" she said. Jafar glared at her. "I still have uses for you. If you'd just shut your mouth, I'd make you human too." Haillie shook her head. "I don't like being human. Humans are over-rated. I like being a genie perfectly well."

I looked at her and smiled. "But I'll get old now. And you'll watch me die as a wrinkled old woman." Haillie rolled her eyes. "Won't get me that way, I swear that you won't. You've always wanted to be mortal, but I haven't. I'll follow you into the afterlife, since genies can do that, and bug you there. Haha, gotcha there, eh? Bet you weren't expecting that."

My eyes were brimming full of liquid tears like I hadn't felt in years. I hugged my sister tightly. "STOP HUGGING ME!" whined Haillie. I smiled and just squeezed tighter.

At that moment, I didn't even bother to ask why Jafar was suddenly wanting to free both of his genies, the source of all his power in the court currently. I didn't worry about the fate of the Sultana.

All I knew was that I was brimming with happiness.

_Freedom._

I tasted the word in my mouth, trying it out. And it didn't taste half bad.

**A/N: Well. I refuse to say that it was a filler chapter, because it wasn't. Jala turning human? It's not a small event! She's probably the first genie in Agrabah to turn from a human into a genie and back again!**


	26. Flight

**A/N: Well, this sudden dash of fast updates again is probably going to mean some long lapse soon. Not because of writer's block, (too many loose ends for that to be even a _possibility)_, but because of life. Something like that always happens, what with Halloween coming up, a straight row of my friends' b-days, Thanksgiving, Veteran's Day, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, ETC. Anyways, I hope you're enjoying the story. To helk, (combination between heck and hell that Haillie made up) with that "2 chapter left" thing. Differences will go on! And I will post an especially long epilogue at the ending point, which is some way off.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Aladdin, even though I would adore the idea of owning an evil mastermind like Jafarty here. And Haillie's plot bunnies are still nestled in the plotline somewhere…(looks around suspiciously)**

**Chapter 26**

**Flight**

**(Sultana Kamaria)**

Uggghhhh…

Urrnnnnnnnnnnnnn….

Hnnnnnnmmmmmmmnnnn…

Wow. I was a caveman. Ahem. Cavewoman.

Blackness. More unconsciousness was coming, then.

…………………………..

Sun peaked blearily through my eyelids. My head was throbbing, I felt like my stomach was going to heave. There was a sick, dry and fuzzy feeling in my throat, like after a night you've been up too long and laughed too much. My throat screamed with soreness, demanding a good long swig of clear water.

When I opened my eyelids halfway, I decided that it hadn't even been worth the effort of using the tiny muscles found in the eyelids. The light dazzled my already confounded vision. It made my stomach retch, though I managed to keep my last meal down.

I must have passed out numerous times already, because the sun was too high in the sky for it to be the same day as my…my brain shot awake. _Kidnapped_. The word branded me.

A bolt of panic flashing through my chest pushed the wooziness off to a corner for the moment. Jafar, plotting to overtake the throne. Genies, everywhere. Aladdin and Jasmine, still needing to be wed. _The press_. At this last thought, I decided not to think at all. Any thoughts about _the press_ would just make me throw up anyways.

I felt it more than I heard it.

Hot, wet breath, right below my ear. A moment later, I felt pressure against the hollow where my head and my neck were connected. "She's awake," grunted a gruff voice. Badump, badump, said my heart.

Searing pain.

It was more like a kick, actually. It landed right in between my third and fourth rib, my personal weak spot. I choked and gasped as the throbbing pain spread from the kicked side. I would have rolled over, but in my current state, that was hopeless.

I heard a sneering chuckle, and then another loud, higher-pitched voice. "Don't do that, Taabish! The order were to have her unharmed!" An acknowledging grunt. It was the first time that I was aware of the clopping of horse hooves, and rattling of wheels over a rutted road.

But for now, I concentrated on the pain spreading through my side. I would be sore for weeks. I wanted to curse and rant and rave and insult their mothers with the best swears I knew for doing this to me, reducing their Sultana to a pulp like this, but right now, I didn't even have the energy to cry.

……………………….

It might have been the swaying of the horse-drawn wagon, or the drug kicking in again, or just the pain. But I knew one thing for sure: I fell unconscious again before long.

When I came to, it was obvious that it was night. The sky was a perfect shade of royal blue with stars twinkling like precious gems strewn across it. I was facing up again now, and my arms had gone numb from me lying on top of them. When I tried to move them to get them to circulate, I realized that my hands were tied.

For that moment, I had forgotten that I was a hostage captive. I just looked at the sky and appreciated the rocking movement of the wagon and the beautiful colors of the Arabian world.

And then I just had to move my hands, and was reminded of all of _this_ scum.

The gruff-voiced man called Taabish was leering at me when I turned my head to the right. "Awake at last, sleeping beauty," he hissed between yellowed teeth. I winced at the tang of tobacco.

The driver, a thin, reedy man with a goatee, curled his beard nervously around his finger and twitched constantly, as if feeling like somebody was constantly watching him and evaluating his doings. "Taabish!" he said sharply.

Taabish turned angrily, and yelled, "What?!"

The little man twitched. His goatee wobbled dangerously. "She's awake?" Taabish nodded irritably. "Well, we're nearing Allah's City, so untie her but guard her well. I'm not going to carry her all the way to the bosses home."

Taabish grunted, heaved me up none too gently, and began painfully unknotting my hands, jerking the stout rope hard every time, trying to cause me pain in every way possible. I winced and gritted my teeth, and refused the temptation to whimper and cry and beg them for my life.

As I sat and waited for the burning in my wrists to subside, (rubbing them felt like burning them), I watched as the skyline of a vast city appeared. It was very large, probably larger than Agrabah.

"Cadi! Drive the horses faster!" Taabish roared. The thin man obliged. "Hiya!" The horses, both gray, were whipped into a gallop, and we entered the city with a cloud of dust trailing behind us.

………………………..

Nearly two hours later, I was brought before their "boss".

It was a large, four-story building that they called their "headquarters". I was led painfully up all the staircases, with me gingerly laying down my blistered feet and Taabish yanking on my sleeve and heaving me up if I did not go fast enough.

Cadi and Taabish stopped in front of a large pair of double doors, pushed them forward, and threw themselves to the ground in a low bow. When I did not follow their actions immediately, Taabish glared out from the floor and yanked so hard on the hem of my dress that I stumbled and fell in between my two captors.

I just sat there, refusing to bow. I was a Sultana, and I had my dignity to preserve.

The man sitting on the throne could not be called handsome. He had a sharp nose, a well-angled face, and sharp brown eyes. He had thick lips and an unevenly tanned face, with whiskers spreading unevenly over the bottom half of his face. His hair was tousled and unevenly cut, sticking up in odd, unpredictable bunches.

He had a thick neck, too.

But something about him caught my interest.

His voice, most likely.

His voice, when he spoke, was like honey. It seemed to sing and paint pictures, and slide pleasantly, like honey. If voices had color, his would be honey-gold. I could listen to him speak for a millennia and ever on.

But his words to say were not so pleasant. They echoed off the high walls of the chamber so that even I, lost in the web his words spun, could not miss them.

"Ah, at last. I see the Sultana of Agrabah, high and mighty, kneeling at _my_ feet." He gave an amused chuckle. "I have long awaited this moment. I can die happy now." I did not respond, nor make any move to bow again.

"Taabish! Cadi! Leave us!" he suddenly said, throwing two pouches of money at their feet. They scrambled to get out of the room, clutching the money greedily in their clawed, grubby hands.

The man looked at me thoughtfully, contemplated. It suddenly struck me the odd resemblance he had to Jasmine's father. Or rather, Sorrah's father. Those were the same eyes, and the same kingly smile. I shook my head. What was I thinking? The old Sultan had been nothing like this man.

And yet…

The resemblance stood. And then I noticed something more: the sharp nose. It was _my_ nose. And those high eyebrows.

He was chuckling sadistically now. "So, at last, mother, we meet again. And this time, I am the ruler on the throne looking down at _you_." I choked. "M-mother?" I finally asked.

"And how is my dear sister Sorrah, pray tell?" he continued. I was shivering. My eyes were wide, staring at my shaking hands and clawing at the floor for a hand grip. Good thing I was already sitting.

Blackness was closing around my eyes again. "Not again," was my last thought.

I fainted to the sound of my son's laughter.

**A/N: Wow. Any more plot twists and this story will go on for fifty chapters or more. We can't have that, can we?**


	27. Finally Forever

**A/N: Hi! Sorry, lots of Halloween preparations and mounds of homework. **

**Right now, I'm listening to Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" as I write, so that might have some kind of influence. Angsty songs…eh. Yeah. Also, really drastically different songs FROM Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Anyways, everybody knows that long author's notes are just used to take up space and help the writer cheat by making the chapter look long ;). Well, without further ado…**

**Disclaimer: Aladdin would kill me (and himself) if I owned him, I swear. Haillie would kill me too, if I didn't give her credit for her /excellent/ plot bunnies, so here it is, Fluffy-credit where it's rightfully due  And thank you, Jafarcrazy, for your wonderfully long reviews. **

**Chapter 27**

**Finally Forever**

**(Laddie)**

I was in a bubble.

I don't mean like a bath type of bubble. That would be neat, and rather odd, but I wasn't in a bath bubble.

It was more an invisible bubble that kept me out of all the turmoil that was going on all around me, since the Sultana's mysterious disappearance. It might have had a tad to do with the fact of my extremely non-royal origins, but I failed to be worked up to the point of hysteria over the whole thing.

The sound of my bare feet clunking on the cold tile of the hallway leading to me and Jasmine's quarters echoed disturbingly into the odd silence. My black, mid-day shadow stretched eerily behind me, nearly to the end of the hallway as I kept walking, the cold of the tiles seeping into the soles of my callused feet.

I stopped in front of Jasmine's doorway, suddenly unsure of what I was about to do.

Was it me, or did everyone seem like they couldn't care less about the Sultana's kidnapping, and yet felt like they had an obligation to worry until their hair turned gray? Even Jasmine and Sorrah seemed oddly calm about the entire thing.

Was our ruler such a dull person that she had just slipped between our values and vanished sometime during the last few days? I shuddered. When I was Sultan, would that someday happen to me?

The door pulled back, and Jasmine was standing there in her usual clothes. She looked mildly surprised to see me. I smiled slightly at her. "Aladdin?" Her voice sounded worried. "Aren't you supposed to be with Jafar and the press?"

I shuddered. "Not for long." She chuckled, still having that undertone of worry.

That was when I remembered why I was there. Nervously, I fingered the small ringlet of silver in my sash, tucked in securely. I stumbled in through her door. Jasmine had her forehead wrinkled now, and sat down on the bed.

Good. She was sitting. I took out the ring to her, got down on one knee, and said, "Jasmine, will you marry me? For real this time?"

…………………….

I knew that I was technically obligated to marry her. But it suddenly occurred to me that I had never actually told Jasmine that I /wanted/ to marry her. It just, well, never happened. And I wanted her so badly to know that I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life, that I wanted her to be with me forever and a day.

I lay back on my bed, feeling extremely proud of myself. Genie floated by, looking extremely smug, with his eyebrows raised cockily and blowing out of a pipe that he had probably stolen from Jafar. The smoke formed shapes…the normal ones that Genie always made. Rubber ducky, genie with a lot of muscles, monkey…HAILLIE?

I choked, and watched as the smoke formed a pink genie.

Genie started and the pipe flew into the air. It flew through the amazingly realistic smoke Haillie, and it disappeared.

"Oh, no. You wouldn't," I muttered at Genie. Genie was bright red. "Al, listen to me." I shook my head and grinned, making kissing noises with my hands. Genie huffed and vanished to who-knows-where.

………………………..

A few hours later, Genie was back.

"Look, Al. I don't like Jafarty, or whatever his name is, no matter what you and Jasmine might say. I need to save Haillie from him, alright? Even if Jala is human now, for who knows what reason, I need to save Haillie. Because…because, er, she's my girl."

I smirked at him. "Well, it's not like she KNOWS she's my girl," Genie added defensively. This was so unlike him that I wanted to laugh. But I didn't. The statistics were that Genie had magical powers and I didn't.

"You look like you could use some lady help yourself," said Genie, vying to change the subject. I blushed eight shades of red and 10 shades of pink.

"None of your business," I shot back.

Genie's answer was only a chuckle.

**A/N: I know, such a slow update and it was basically a filler.  Life has been difficult.**


	28. Awkward

**A/N: Well, what can I say. Life is difficult? **

**Disclaimer: Don't own anybody. Well, I do own a few people. Haillie, Jala, Sorrah, (sort-of), the Sultana, (sort-of), Taabish, Cadi, the Sultana's 'son', and whoever else that you don't know. Oh yes. The press, and the violent threesome of girls. shudder Good thing they don't know that if they combined along with my little sister they could take over the world.**

**Wow. Disclaimer was longer than the Author's Note? jots down in archives**

**Chapter 28**

**Awkward**

**(Jafar)**

I just couldn't.

I just couldn't, wouldn't get used to Jala being human. I couldn't very well reverse the wish now, but Jala _human_ was just pushing my limits to beyond _their_ limits.

At first, it was very agonizing, trying to figure out why the fact that Jala was flesh and bone bothered me so much. It was the seventh day after the transformation that I finally figured it out.

Jala walked into the room just as I was climbing out of my tiny bed. I had gotten used to her daily appearances two days ago, when I stopped expecting green mist to be waving over the now-empty genie lamp on the table.

"How soon do you think a genie will take your place in the lamp?" I asked casually. Jala narrowed her still kohl-painted eyes suspiciously at me. "Jafar, you're so greedy. You had me, Haillie, and now you want _another_ genie?"

I shook my head quickly. "No, it's just…well, I'd like to know if another mystical being is going to be involved with us anytime soon." Jala smiled. "I forgot to say…there is a limit to the time a lamp can be used. This lamp is probably one of the oldest still existing in Agrabah. I don't think any more genies will be making a visit anytime soon."

I nodded agreeably.

"Are you sure?"

I had done so many wrongs in my life that Allah would probably just grace me with a curse. Admittedly, I deserved it.

Jala seemed to have sensed my thoughts. "_Taqabbala Allahu minna wa minkum_," she murmured to me softly, putting one of her delicate hands over my shoulder. Fire seemed to erupt from the place where she had touched me, and I involuntarily flinched back.

The former genie looked crestfallen. I didn't blame her.

That was when it struck me: I felt _whole_. Not as in literally, but there was a space in my figurative heart that had never been filled, not since my mother…Love.

I automatically flinched back form the word. It was poisonous and seething and evil. No. That was what _I_ was. Love was the exact opposite, and I shied away from it, my ultimate downfall.

The exact time when I discovered that I loved Jala didn't come to me, but I was quite sure why. Jala was lovely, not only on the outside, wreathed as she was in graceful emerald green robes. Her HEART was beautiful, practically radiating with love while mine was that of a fallen angel.

"Jafar? Are you still alive?" Jala was saying, looking half mad and half amused.

"Or maybe you really are deaf," she commented at my blank look.

Then she softened. I absently touched the burning spot where her hand had been. "Jafar…" said Jala softly. "Hn?" I replied.

"Now that I'm human, can we be friends?" I was startled by the innocence in her voice. "What?" Jala looked stricken. "I said, can we be friends? You know, 'two people joined by a special bond', as the dictionary states."

"Of…of course we can be…f-_friends_," I said the word, my tongue unfamiliar with it.

"But I was hoping for a little more," I added quietly. Jala's head snapped up. "_What?"_

"Er, nothing, nothing at all," I replied smoothly, gliding up. What was /that/? Who had possessed me to say that? Was I /dreaming/ or was I just clinically insane? Jafar, THE Jafar, did not say that to anybody.

"No, you said something," Jala insisted. I whirled. "_I didn't say anything_, understand?"

Jala had stood up too. I noticed that she was nearly as tall as I was. Wow. That was impressive. Her frame was slim. Her eyes were a lovely, almost transparent green.

Her robes swished as she took a large step forward, nearly pressed against me. She smelled like jasmines. I tried not to do anything rash.

"Well, perhaps I can coax you to say it again? After all, I can be poor of hearing," she murmured shyly.

Now that was a lie if I had ever heard one. Jala? Poor of hearing? My butt.

Jala wrapped me in a warm, affectionate hug. My reflexes pulled back. Unfortunately, Jala was unbelievably strong for somebody of her size. "Now, what was that you said again?"

"Um…"

All rational thoughts fled my mind.

Jala's hands draped loosely across my shoulders. There was that fire again. I wondered where the burn came from…it seemed suitable to be that of a large woodland fire's. I bit my lip, my eyes widening.

Next thing I knew, Jala pulled my head down and kissed me softly. It was sweet and full, and though my body jerked violently to the sudden show of affection, my mind melted and failed to think anymore.

**A/N: Ok, if that was totally out of character, then believe me, I KNOW. Try writing Jafar falling in love sometime. THE Jafar here, oh yeah.**

**Taqabbala Allahu minna wa minkum: May Allah accept from us, and from you.**


	29. Hubb

**A/N: "Hubb" means "love" in Arabic.**

**Disclaimer: No own. Too tired to type out the entire thing --;**

**Chapter 29**

**Hubb**

**(Jafar)**

Delightful. Positively delightful.

Here's how it happened, unbiased by my opinion of the matter. (That version includes terms not qualified to be mentioned in the presence of civilized company. What those big words mean is, it has a lot of swear words in it.)

I was kissing Jala, and Haillie walked in.

Simple, short, and to the point.

Anyways, there we were, somewhere in the most blissful place on Cloud 9, and that accursed, pepto bismol-dipped, missing-screws sister of the most wonderful former-genie in the world walks in.

Haillie, to call her by proper name.

Her face made a sort of "I knew this would happen eventually but I was happily in denial" sort of expression, and stuck out her tongue, and ever _so_ politely, blew a raspberry straight into my face.

"Haillie, please," Jala pleaded. Haillie harrumphed and left us in peace. She would have slammed the door, but I think she was too furious to even do that properly.

Jala sighed, put her head in her hands, and sank to the floor, apparently having taken the staircase back off of Cloud 9. I watched her, experiencing that odd feeling of watching a scene happen without actually being in it.

Before we could do much more, however, bugles were being sounded outside. Jala stood up, rather startled, and we exchanged a glance. Bugles were only used when something extremely important happened. Whatever could it be?

We rushed out of the room, nearly colliding with Jasmine, Aladdin, Genie, and Sorrah, who were also stumbling dazedly out into the corridor. Jasmine made a little beckoning hand motion. I followed as quickly as I could on the course she was leading us on.

Out in the courtyard, what seemed like a sea without end of courtiers were gathered. There was a distinct space between the average people and _the press_, where they were huddled in a corner. There was just a tight group of weirdos, a space, and then the rest of the courtiers. As if the _press_ were isolated from the rest of normal society, (which they probably were).

Outside of the palace gates, there was a huge caravan of what looked like a wealthy person. In the front was the grandest carriage, with a proud-looking two-humped camel pawing the ground in front of it.

Far away on his towering spire, the _Moazzen_ was calling for prayers. Nobody moved a muscle.

Out of the caravan stepped a man with handsomely chiseled features and a beard. "Greetings, courtiers of Agrabah!" he called in a deep voice. Silence. "My name is Raakin, son of Ra'ed, of Samarkand. I have your Sultana Kamaria. I have come to barter with you for her life."

There was a hushed murmuring now among the gathered courtiers, like a wave. Ra'ed, the name of our deceased Sultan, may Allah protect his soul.

"How do we know that you speak the truth?" called one burly man amidst the concubines that still lived at the palace. Raakin made an almost indecipherable motion to the huge man next to him, and the big man dragged a struggling Kamaria out of the carriage. There was a gasp.

She was gagged, and bound rather securely.

Raakin took her none too gently and pressed a schmitar securely against her throat. "Listen, and listen well, if you wish for her to continue living," he roared.

Jala nudged me. Her hand was trembling. I squeezed it.

Stepping forward, I replied calmly, "Stop, and do not act rashly. I am Jafar, the Grand Vizier of this palace. What do you want?" Raakin squinted at me. "Gold." "Ah, what we all would want a little more of. How much?" I drawled.

The man considered me for a moment. "Four million riyal," he finally shouted.

More gasping. I stood calmly. "Why should I grant you that?" Raakin narrowed his eyes, and pressed the schmitar harder against the Sultana's throat. A tiny trickle of blood made itself visible. I involuntarily flinched, though my robes concealed it.

"Do not forget that we are the one with the trained army," I reminded him, bluffing. Our army was pretty out of shape right now. Raakin seemed to know this. His eyes narrowed like a greedy cats. "I will give you until sundown twenty four hours from now to grant me what I want."

With that, the Sultana was yanked out of our view.

The courtiers were frantic, trampling this way and that. I hopelessly gave up trying to preserve order. Instead, I found my group, and we fled to Jasmine and Aladdin's quarters to further discuss our situation alone.

The press need not be involved.

After all, this job required brains.

**A/N: A bit short, but it's not a filler, eh?**

**Schmitar-curved sword**

**Samarkand-city in Saudi Arabia**

**Allah-God (I hope you knew that before now.)**

**Moazzen-a person that calls five times a day from a tower for a Muslim to prayer**

**Riyal-the Saudi Arabian currency. About 4 riyal equal to 1 American dollar.**

**Caravan-a group of people traveling together for protection through the desert**

**Pepto Bismol-a pink cold medicine. That's not Arabian, but just so that you know what it is **


	30. Ransom

**Disclaimer: No own. Kami likes her head. She would prefer to keep it. She wouldn't be able to if she didn't give credit.**

**A/N: I'm really sorry about the last chapter. I had it typed and ready before the halfway point of November. The day I tried to post it, the stupid documents manager thingy wouldn't post it. I forgot about it. I remembered the day after Thanksgiving. **

**Which reminds me. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!**

**I have this idea that might work. At the end of Differences, I might post a list of songs to listen to if you ever want to reread the story. A different song for each chapter, set the mood, you know?**

**Chapter 30**

**Ransom**

**(Sorrah)**

My head was going to explode.

It wasn't the most ladylike thing to state, but I had to say it because it was only true. The information poured into one ear but refused to go out the other, and it was clogging the part of my brain used for judgment.

"God is most great. God is most great.  
God is most great. God is most great.  
I testify that there is no god except God.  
I testify that there is no god except God.  
I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.  
I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.  
Come to prayer! Come to prayer!  
Come to success (in this life and the Hereafter)!  
Come to success!  
God is most great. God is most great.  
There is no god except God."

The call for prayer outside sounded again, insistently worming its way under the closed door of Jasmine's bedroom. I squirmed guiltily, and finally relented, pulling out my prayer mat and shifting to face Makkah.

Jasmine and Aladdin pulled out much finer rugs than mine and also knelt toward Makkah. Genie and Haillie sighed and waited for us to finish impatiently.

The prayer finished, the humans sat in a circle with the genies hovering around. The tense air filled my ears. I wiggled a finger, annoyed, inside my earlobe, actually expecting to find some kind of barrier to meet my fingertip.

Jasmine sighed, ran a hand through her hair, frowned, and snagged a single strand of white just behind her ear. She flung it away, looking somewhere between scared, disgusted, and impatient.

Aladdin put a hand on her shoulder.

She swiped it away.

"We can't figure out who's in line for the throne. My _mother_ is outside being held captive by her own son. And she's not even my mother anymore. Jafar's got Haillie captive. We're still not married. And in the midst of it all, Genie ate the last chocolate chip cookie," sobbed Jasmine, hugging Aladdin tightly.

Jala, Jafar, me, and Genie turned away. Haillie giggled madly.

The pink genie glared at her sister. I shrugged. They were always bickering. Jala was younger, but she had more authority. Haillie was older and had more power. It was bound to cause some problems.

I crept silently away from the crowd on the floor and picked up the warm tea kettle resting peacefully in the corner of the room. The hot porcelain burned the icy-cold palms of my hands so that I nearly dropped it. Instead, I clamped it firmly and let it burn my hands until they smoked.

Jafar seemed much older than he did the last time I had seen him. His features sagged. "Four million riyal…" he kept repeating under his breath.

It was sad, how we sat and worried ourselves out like old women. I smiled wanly to myself. How I wished that I had wings, so that I could fly out of this situation!

"When there is nothing else to be thankful for, be thankful that you are alive," I murmured to myself, and served the tea.

…………………………………….

The sunset colors of Agrabah in the night sky exploded across their black background like rogue fireworks. I sat, trying very hard not to cry, on the wide windowsill of a corridor one floor below Jasmine's rooms.

After much debate, we knew that we could not give Raakin the four million riyal that he demanded. It was as fair price as we could get for our Sultana, especially since we didn't have a definite heir right now, but it was _just too much_. On the other hand, we could not refuse Raakin the offer, because even though she was his mother, he would not hesitate to kill the Sultana and then start a rebel war afterwards.

The solution? Ready the troops and steal back the Sultana. No deal.

Jafar, who had a million unfair reasons why women should not participate in a kidnap-and-go situation, and picked Aladdin and Genie to go with him, along with Razoul. I had a sneaking suspicion that he was only leaving us behind because of Jala, but held my tongue.

Now, as the light ebbed away over the horizon, I bit my fingernails and worried until my heart must have had caterpillar holes in it.

The large, grand caravan of Raakin and his followers glinted eerily against the humble dirt path stretching up to the front gates of the palace. The camels snorted while lapping water greedily from the palace well that was outside of the gates.

The time to snatch back our ruler was going to have to be now, under the safe blanket of night. There was no other choice.

Vaguely, I was aware of four small dots, three black and one blue, moving stealthily but steadily across the palace grounds. Vaguely, I was also aware that these dots must be Jafar and Aladdin and Genie and Razoul.

My head shut down unpleasant thoughts about what would happen if this went completely wrong, while my heart felt like it was about to rip apart.

**A/N: I wouldn't say it's a filler, it was pretty necessary, but it's not a right chapter either…**


	31. Resolution

**Disclaimer: I don't happen to own Aladdin.**

**A/N: This is going to be extremely near the end of the fic already. I can feel my passion for writing this slipping away. It's just a thing that happens to me when it's time for The End. In other words, this will be a pretty eventful chapter.**

**Chapter 31**

**Resolutions**

**(Laddie)**

The night was dark, but we had thought ahead.

Frames of metal covered with oiled waxpaper and filled with fireflies lit the way in speckled light for us, until we reached what was unmistakably the Sultana's carriage. It was guarded by six burly-looking men wielding schmitars, battle-axes, and long bows.

Jafar made several complicated hand motions. I got the gist of it: Genie is the distraction. Razoul stands guard for more men on the way from the other carriages in the caravan. I would help however I could while Jafar went in and snatched back our Sultana.

It was a good plan, and Jafar vanished into the night before anybody could object anyways.

………………………

The six men did not look dangerous without reason.

Genie got them distracted easily enough: Raakin sure had men with short attention spans. My blue djinn simply appeared out of nowhere, and announced in a loud voice, "Look! A rock!" All of the men immediately left their posts to look at the rock.

I think I am truly the reason it didn't work. Abu had insisted on coming with me, and he chirped, laughing, and the men noticed us. The first to charge was a man with a curly beard and smelling strongly of alcohol and tobacco.

Even as a former street rat, I was not the most skilled person with a dagger in the world. I managed to fend the two or three guards that charged me for a little while, but knew that they couldn't be held off for long.

Just then, Jafar appeared in the corner of my peripheral vision, running toward the palace at top speed and looking like he was carrying something rather heavy. I smiled, and ducked between the space of the guards just as they charged me from all around. DONG! Their heads collided. Perfect.

We had just managed to close the huge palace gates when Raakin was apparently awakened. His roar of rage upon finding his loss echoed around the caravan. Men were pouring out of the various carriages.

Jafar was already halfway across the courtyard, looking like a mere wisp of shadow battling for existence with the lack of light. I followed the moving swish of his robes, Razoul right behind me. Genie had no doubt taken an easier route.

My panting and heavy footfalls were earth shatteringly loud once I reached the tiled but safe corridors of the inside palace. I didn't stop running though, not until the moonbeams rested on the door of Jasmine's bedroom. I pushed open the door, trying not to make too much noise.

OOF.

Jasmine smothered me in a tight hug. "You're back," she murmured, muffled by the fabric at my shoulder. I embraced her tightly. "Yes, I'm back," I replied. "Would you mind getting a room?" complained Genie, who had just appeared behind Jasmine.

Jasmine turned, smiled, and hugged him too. Genie looked officially pissed, but succumbed anyways.

……………………………..

The Sultana was back. Though she was a little worse for the wear, she was mostly physically unharmed. The cut on her neck was pretty minor, and though she winced whenever she moved, the best physician in the palace had confirmed it to be minor bruises.

Raakin on the other hand…

We had thought that the armies would have an armful dealing with him and his "little" rebellion, which was no longer so little. However, I think we overestimated him. With the failed kidnapping of the Sultana, his stamina just _snapped_.

The next morning, when we looked out the window, all traces of the caravan was gone with the wind. I never saw Raakin again, and I don't believe anybody else in the palace did either.

Raakin might have been the son of one of the greatest Sultans to ever rule, but I don't think he took after his father very much at all personality-wise. In truth, I believe Raakin had the willpower of a common criminal, who wanted no more than a good place to sleep at night and a fast way to get it.

A week later, once the Sultana was well enough to be up out of bed at normal hours, our group held a meeting that didn't have anything to do with _the press_. It involved various things. Jafar's commanding power over Haillie, the person next in line for the throne, my wedding to Jasmine.

Jafar narrowed his eyes at Jasmine and I, who were trying to look innocent and very, very small. "Give me three reasons why I should wish for Haillie to be free, one for every wish that I could possibly make at this very moment." The sulky tone of his voice reminded me oddly of a pouting two-year-old.

"One, Haillie has feelings just like the rest of us and I don't believe she likes being prisoner to a person like you, Jafar," Jasmine pointed out. Jafar didn't have anything to say to that. Haillie nodded enthusiastically. "He's a git," she mouthed behind Jafar's head.

"Two," Sorrah giggled. "We believe that if given the chance, temptation would be too much for you and you would end up wishing for something extremely stupid or harmful to others." Again, Jafar started to protest and found nothing to say. "True, true," he said, sounding distractedly and rocking his head amiably.

"Three," I finished. "Wouldn't it feel nice just to do something nice for a change? Like you did for Jala?" Jafar considered this.

"I'm not sure about that last one, but I still don't want to wish Haillie free," he drawled, lying back in a chair. Jala stared at him pleadingly. "Jafar, she's my sister!" Jafar glanced at her. Something in his eyes flickered. "For me?" Jala whispered.

I don't believe the strongest-willed man could ever resist the pouting face of the female that they are in love with. Jafar might have been an evil mastermind, but he was only human. And he was only male, like me and the rest of them.

"Only for you," he whispered in Jala's ear. Haillie squealed in such a high-pitch that a palace dog in the next room barked loudly.

"I wish for you to be free," Jafar said in a grudging voice. There was a pop like the sound of the cork of a whiskey bottle coming loose.

"WHEEEEEEEEE!" shouted Haillie, jumping up and down and finally settling in Jala's lap. Jala mock-sighed, and tried not to be squashed. Everybody could tell that underneath the façade, she was just as giddy as Haillie or the next person.

I smiled, feeling the expression warm my face.

Jafar looked deflated and proud at the same time.

"Now that that's settled," the Sultana remarked, "we need to figure out who is next in line for the throne. It is a rather pressing matter, dear," she remarked to Jasmine. Jasmine nodded. "I believe that the original bloodline should rule Agrabah. Me and Aladdin do not have a wish to rule Agrabah, though we would gladly comply to if needed. Since Haillie is currently eligible and sane, I think she should serve the ordinary term for Sultana and then step down for her Grand Vizier to take over when the time is right."

The plan sounded good, and so obvious that I wondered if we truly had not thought to do that before. Jafar's ears perked up. "Did I just hear that she would step down for her Grand Vizier to take the throne when the time is right?"

We all looked at him incredulously.

"No."

**A/N: Lol, all the problems are solved…..the next chapter will be the epilogue. That will be pretty long. Then I will probably post the Differences sound track! Yay! And A final Author's Note.**


	32. Epilogue

**Disclaimer: For the last time, literally, I DON'T OWN ALADDIN. PART OF THIS FIC GOES TO HAILLIE. JAFARCRAZY AND HAILLIE KEPT ME MOTIVATED THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE THING, THAT AND THE THOUGHT THAT HAILLIE THE INSANE GENIE WAS LIVING OUT THERE IN THE FIC WITHOUT A FATE. THANK YOU.**

**A/N: Wow. I think I'm drunk on capital letters today. **

**Sadly, the epilogue will be the last official chapter in Differences. Ever get that feeling in the second-to-last chapter that you're so glad to be finished, then in the last one you decide that you're going to bawl the moment you're finished writing the fic? Yeah. I've got that feeling right now.**

**After the epilogue, I will post the completed "Differences" soundtrack list, which I think I could have done a better job with. If you have a better song for any chapter, let me know, and I'll change it and give you credit! After that, I will be leaving a LONG Author's Note, (posted separately), about the fic and such other doodads.**

**Anyways. If I keep typing, the Author's Note for the Epilogue will probably be larger than the epilogue itself.**

**-DewWater**

**EPILOGUE**

**(Normal POV)**

The deep, full, and pleasantly resonating sound of wedding bells clashed through all of Agrabah, ringing true. They faded slowly and sweetly, and the haunting tunes of an organ playing took over.

The bright, searing Saudi Arabian sun was brilliantly shedding its rays today, pleasantly warming the silken sand that ran between everybody's sandaled toes. The wisps of white, streaming cloud winged aimlessly past on a full, pale blue sky that stretched to the end of the world. Distantly, behind a haze of heat, the dunes of the desert rose majestically.

In the city, everything was bustling. Sellers eagerly shouted for people to buy their wares on this wondrous day, half price or more if they were willing to barter with the crafty market men. Women hurried past, the moons of their faces glinting from within their best headscarves. Men strode with dignity in their best robes, the older ones bearing proud beards and hauling along wailing children.

Throughout all of the noise, the inside of the palace was as quiet, cool, serene, and most of all, detached from this hurried outside world as possible. The sunshine shafted through a multitude of rounded stained glass windows, mutilated into swirling painter's rainbows on the tiled floors of the main hall.

Cool air, truly cold air, breezed through the wooden ceiling fans as they blasted scented sandalwood coolness down to the sweating guests, all standing clothed in layers of their finest and full of nervous energy.

The organ music continued on, unperturbed by the sudden tenseness of everybody in attendance of the room. It droned on, reaching the high domed ceilings of the palace, where it vanished slowly into thin air. The sad, mournful medley full of angst stopped, and turned abruptly into a more cheerful tune as the grand oak double doors at the end of the hallway swung open with a bang.

The bride was positively lovely. More than that. _Beautiful_.

Aladdin stood, with the ridiculous Ali hat with a feather added on at the end of the hallway, and thought appreciatively to himself, "Jasmine, my Jasmine." Unfortunately for the groom, the majority of the courtiers had decided that whenever Aladdin was allowed to make his vows for himself at the two weddings to Jasmine that had already been attempted, it always ended badly. Therefore, this time, Haillie had securely shut his mouth with duct tape.

Jasmine had veiled her face with a brilliantly red headscarf. The pattern of silver suns and golden moons that adorned it glittered as she processed down the hallway, hugging the red and gold robes that adorned her body, shyly fidgeting with the multicolored bangles that progressed all the way up to her elbow.

She at last reached the end, where Aladdin was waiting, looking happy to the point of giddiness, even with the duct tape. Haillie stood behind him, and huffed, looking happy at the same time for the young couple.

"I do," murmured Jasmine softly, almost intelligible.

"Mmph," muttered Aladdin through the duct tape. "I do," Haillie quickly made up for him.

As the honking of horns began amongst the crowd, Jasmine looked confused and abashed. "Did I just marry Haillie, or Aladdin?" she laughed as she and the groom were pulled along by the eager tide of the crowd. Haillie smiled. "I sure hope it wasn't me, because I'm planning to marry Genie later today." Jasmine and Aladdin both choked on their drinks and spat. "WHAT?" raged Jasmine. Despite the circumstances, she still considered Haillie to be "her" genie.

Haillie laughed uproariously. "You should have seen your faces!" she laughed. "Heck, do I look like the kind of person to settle down?" Jasmine and Aladdin looked at each other, considered lying, but then meekly shook their heads at the hot pink, eccentric genie. She toasted the new couple.

"Can't wait till the coronation," she muttered, going away to find Jala.

……………………….

Later that afternoon, the room was silent again. The mess created at the wedding, mostly by _the press_, was cleared away. Now, instead of joyous energy, the crowd was solemn, respectful, and silently waiting for their new Sultana to be crowned ruler.

Sultana Kamaria stood on the dais, dressed fully in royal garb and proudly displaying the royal crown on her head. Jafar stood tall by her side, with Haillie on the other. Everybody watched with wide eyes as the old Sultana stood, and took off the crown slowly with both of her hands, which were covered in many, but not gaudy, rings.

"I thereby crown this young woman…Sultana of Agrabah!" As the crown was securely leveled onto Haillie's head, the crowd burst into enthusiastic cheers. Haillie sat down, the goofiest and widest smile ever seen pasted all over her hot pink face.

She was so hyper that she nearly forgot that she was supposed to name a new Grand Vizier!

"My new Grand Vizier shall be…" she said slowly, agonizing everybody by drawing out the moment. Jafar would have dropped dead right there from suspension, but if he did, then who was to take his place? "Jafar…" Jafar did a happy dance, which was extremely odd.

Haillie frowned. "Jafar's _lady_, Jala!" Jala looked extremely surprised, while Jafar started to cry. She went to stand by Haillie, and was handed a large black staff. "Hoorah!" cried the spectators, once they had gotten over the slight shock. "Thanks," Jala murmured to Haillie. Haillie smiled. "No problem."

Genie came over just then, took Haillie's arm, and the colorful couple made their way out of the door to do some fun genie pranking. Sorrah was in a corner with the bride, the groom, and a few other people. Everybody seemed happy. Except…

Jafar was still looking extremely disappointed. Jala patted him on the shoulder. While everybody went to congratulate Haillie, Aladdin, and Jasmine, she leaned over and breathed into Jafar's ear, "Would it help if I mentioned that you never get that last wish from me?"

Jafar perked up. "Last…wish?"

"Just for old time's sake, why don't you make one, and I'll grant it," Jala whispered softly, kissing his cheek. An evil, almost insanely huge, smile spread across Jafar's thin features. "I think…" he started slowly.

"I think that I wish for you to make up a song that makes fun of Aladdin!" Jala sighed. "Why am I not surprised?" "Please?" pouted Jafar, looking so expectant that Jala almost laughed.

.:FIVE MINUTES LATER:.

Jala paraded down the street, sitting atop of a massive parade float. She sang loudly out to Agrabah, while Aladdin and Abu chased the float furiously, embarrassed, desperately, and trying to save their pride.

"Prince Ali

Had to go pee

Under a palm tree.

And Abu

Had to go poo

Into his shoe.

They couldn't find the bathroom

So then they both went BOOM!

Oh,

All the sad things that constipation can do to you!"

**A/N: I hope you're satisfied with the ending! I think I'm pretty proud of it, so…**

**Sung to the tune of "Prince Ali"**


	33. Soundtrack

**Differences:**

**The "Soundtrack"**

**Chapter Title/number Song Name**

An Inlook :: One "Be Prepared" from "The Lion King"

Surprises :: Two "Wake Me Up Inside" by Evanescence

All's Fair in Love and War :: Three Mission Impossible theme song

A Royal Duty :: Four "Everybody's Fool" by Evanescence

Family Feuds :: Five "Genie in a Bottle" by Christina Aguilera

Genies Unleashed :: Six "Identity Crisis" by Thrice

A Secret Love :: Seven "Boats and Birds" by Gregory and the Hawk

Unveiled Identities :: Eight "Somewhere I Belong" by Linkin Park

Escape and Capture :: Nine "Breakaway" by Kelly Clarkson

A Puzzle :: Ten "In The End" by Linkin Park

Mistakes :: Eleven "A La Nanita Nana" from Cheetah Girls

Wrinkled Tassels :: Twelve "A Whole New World" from Aladdin

A Minor Difficulty :: Thirteen "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Greenday

Persuasions and Rare Wishes :: Fourteen "My December" by Linkin Park

A Whole New World :: Fifteen "Who's that Girl" by Hilary Duff

A Hole in the Soul :: Sixteen "Everytime" by Brittany Spears (I know. I know.)

Confession :: Seventeen "My Immortal" by Evanescence

Shock :: Eighteen Harry Potter theme song

Rescued from the Modern World :: Nineteen "Runaway" by Linkin Park

Aftermath :: Twenty "Pump It" by The Black Eyed Peas

Meeting Windstar :: Twenty-one "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Greenday

The Press :: Twenty-two "The Llama Song"

Toxic :: Twenty-three "Toxic" by Brittany Spears (Don't kill me.)

Rebellion :: Twenty-four "Kidnapped" by Gary Moore

Revival :: Twenty-five "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World

Flight :: Twenty-six "He's a Pirate" from POTC

Finally Forever :: Twenty-seven "God Bless the Broken Road" by Rascal Flatts

Awkward :: Twenty-eight "Pushing me Away" by Linkin Park

Hubb :: Twenty-nine "Johnny English" theme

Ransom :: Thirty "Walk Like an Egyptian" by the Bangles

Resolution :: Thirty-one "All Star" by Smash Mouth

Epilogue First Half: Wedding Organ Song

Second Half: Prince Ali from Aladdin

In conclusion to this soundtrack:

I don't believe that it is the best job that I could have done, if I put a little more effort into it. However, thirty-two songs is a lot to look up, so I made do with a few google searches and songs I already know that I think would fit the given chapter.

As I said in earlier chapters, please feel free to notify me if you just can't stand the song selection for one of the chapters. Give me a suggested new song, I'll check it out, will probably decide that it is a whole lot better than the current one up, and post it, (giving you credit, of course).

Some of them do happen to fit very well, in my opinion, so if it happens to be one of those that you can't stand…then, well, I'm not really going to do anything about it. It is MY fanfiction.


	34. Author's Final Note

**An AUTHOR'S NOTE**

**On **

**DIFFERENCES**

**An  
ALADDIN FANFICTION**

**By: Dewwater**

**Kami**

The origin of the story:

The idea for Differences originally came from the time when me and my friends participated in an Aladdin play that was hosted at our school. I was playing Jafar, and because of the number of kids that were in on the entire thing, modifications had to be made. Jasmine had a handmaiden named Naila, and the Sultan turned into a Sultana. I dropped the lamp off of the stage at the dress rehearsal. And that's how the ideas started…

My "original" characters:

Jala, basically, is my idol. She's not perfect, but she's what I strive to be better at. I also consider "Jala" to be a pretty name, (I invented it, bleh), and green is my favorite color. Combine it all, and you have the sensible one out of the sister-genies.

Haillie is created by the "real world" Haillie's request, even though the book-Haillie seems real right now. She's blond and eccentric and wild, just like Halo.at.heart.

Sorrah is based off our original play's Naila. I changed her name, (another one of my brilliant inventions), and played out her part a little bit more than it was done in the play.

The Sultana, well, it depends on how you look at it. She could be counted as an invented character, but really she's just based off of the original Sultan with a much more drab personality.

The villains, Raakin, Taabish, and Cadi…I just invented them on the spur of the moment. The people of Differences can't all be good, y'know!

Other people, well, contact me if you are truly interested in that kind of thing. I know I'm not, and I'm writing this.

….IN GENERAL….

Differences has been really fun to write.

That's an understatement. I've had my moments of depression, where I threw up my hands, (literally, I hit the bed pole), and decided that the story line was doomed. Others, I typed four chapters in less than two days.

Sadly, the writing experience is now over for me. It was truly most likely the fic that I put the most effort into, out of all the one's I've written, next to "Hold my Paw, We're in it Together".

I'm going to miss the eccentric Haillie and the sensible Jala and the evil and yet human Jafar. SO MUCH. /Starts to bawl/

Goodbye, Jafarcrazy, I hope we meet again soon, and to all of the other readers, thank you SO MUCH for putting time into reading my story. I hope we meet again soon too.

Haillie, well, I'm going to see you every. Single. Day. For the next, what, two years? No worries there, heh heh.

In any case, I'm really sad that this is ending, but I'm hoping to post a new fanfiction soon and will possibly see you guys there!

On a final note, and trying to stem my tears with cheeseballs,

DewWater

AKA Kami


End file.
